


Love is Not a Victory March

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Implied Incest, M/M, Rock Star AU, extraordinarily heavy angst, hard drug use, implied suicide, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2013-03-09
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:03:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The call comes at midnight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is Not a Victory March

**Author's Note:**

> so this is basically the darkest thing I've ever written. yep.

_The call comes at midnight. Sam is shifting restlessly on the mostly-empty mattress, sliding between consciousness and fitful sleeping, and when the phone rings he sits bolt upright, staring at it for a few seconds before snatching up the receiver and pressing it to his ear._

_“Hello?” he says, voice hoarse with exhaustion._

_There’s a pause on the other end of the line, and then whoever-is-calling says, “Is this Samuel Winchester?”_

_Sam presses his fingers against the corners of his eyes, pushing himself closer to the headboard and squeezing his knees against his chest. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s me.” He swallows, tasting alcohol at the back of his throat, and then he asks:_

_“Is something wrong?”_

_Another pause. Sam hears the faint strains of music coming through the other line, then a burst of static, and the voice sighs and says, “You’d better come down to the station, Mr. Winchester,” before hanging up._

_Fifteen minutes later, Sam is at the police station, his gray v neck still smeared with ketchup stains and his jeans only halfway zipped up and tugged sloppily over untied shoes. His hair hangs sweaty in his face and there’s three days’ worth of stubble on his jaw. Dark circles underline his eyes. Everyone stares but Sam ignores them, walking up to the front desk and leaning against it, elbow hitting a coffee tin full of pencils._

_“I’m Sam Winchester,” he says, and the policeman drags his eyes away from the computer screen and stares up at him. He’s greasy-faced and has a permanent look about his mouth like he’s either sneering or constipated. His nametag reads ‘Officer Zachariah’._

_Sam hates him on sight._

_“This way,” Zachariah says, standing up and leading Sam out of the room and down a hallway. It’s oddly quiet, even for midnight, and Sam pushes his hair out of his face, swallowing around a sudden obstruction in his throat._

_“So what’s going on?” he asks._

_“A body was found,” Zachariah says. “No license, no credit card, nothing but the man and a car matching your description.” He pauses mid-step, turns to look at Sam. Up close he smells faintly of coffee—bitter and dark, the way Lucifer’s always liked it—and Sam thinks he’s going to be sick._

_“It’s not positive,” he continues, “but we need you to identify it anyway.”_

_“Yeah.” Sam exhales shakily, tensing his jaw. “Yeah, no problem.”_

_They continue walking, Sam’s eyes flicking from the dim lights overhead to the scuffed concrete below his feet to the water stains dancing across the walls. By the time they reach their destination, he’s covered in a cold sweat._

_Zachariah inserts a key in the lock, then glances at Sam. “The body is bad off,” he says, hesitantly. “I just want to warn you.”_

_Then he opens the door, and they go in._

_There’s a metal table in the center of the room, with a heavy shape lying atop it, covered by a white sheet. Sam’s heart leaps in his throat, and he reaches up and tugs at his hair, a nervous habit he’s never been able to shake. Zachariah slips the key into his pocket, then walks over and places his hand on the edge of the sheet._

_“Ready?”_

_At Sam’s nod, he draws back the covers._

_The body is nearly unrecognizable—it’s Lucifer’s correct build, height, but his skin is halfway melted off, charred and broken and a fiery, angry red in places where it’s still intact. His hair—what’s left of it—is mostly covered in coagulating blood, some of which evidently dripped onto his ears and cheeks while fresh. There are gashes ripped from his throat straight down across his chest, over his shoulders_

_(where Sam used to bite and lick while he was trying to write songs, and Lucifer would push him away, laughing)_

_and, if Sam squints, he can see teeth marks, deep and swollen, near the center of his ribcage._

_“Jesus,” says Sam, and that’s all he’s able to get out before he’s crouching at the trash can Zachariah’s provided and vomiting, back arching as he throws up, his eyes squeezed shut, the image seared across his brain._

_When he stands up again, shaking, wiping his mouth, Lucifer’s body is covered again, and Zachariah is looking at him with an expression that’s probably supposed to mean pity but really only bespeaks condescension and a slight hint of malice._

_“So that’s him, then?”_

_Sam manages a nod._

_“Thank you,” Zachariah says, and writes something down on a sheet of paper. “You may go now.” He hesitates, then hands Sam a handkerchief, and it’s only then that Sam realizes he’s crying, hot tears coursing down his cheeks in a flood._

_“Um,” says Sam, walking out the door. “What about the preparations?” His voice has gone hoarse again, and he’s finding it hard to speak as he continues:_

_“You know, for the. Uh. Funeral. And everything.”_

_“His family will be notified,” Zachariah murmurs in what Sam’s pretty sure is supposed to be a soothing tone. “You just go home, try to sleep.” He pats Sam on the back, and the taller man flinches away instinctively, sliding the handkerchief down his face before handing it back to Zachariah and almost running out of the station._

_He spends the rest of the night curled up in bed sobbing, the edge of the blanket stuffed into his mouth, the latest Low Roar album on repeat in his ears._

*

**One year earlier:**

His mouth is hot on Sam’s, hot and wet and demanding as he curls his fingers in Sam’s hair, pulling him forward. The music pulsates in their ears, fast and loud and abrasive, and Sam thinks, _Dean would fucking love this._

When the man pulls away from him, they’re both breathing hard, mouths reddened and damp. He’s a little bit shorter than Sam, and blond, with long, muscular arms and legs and a slightly rounded stomach. His eyes are the most remarkably clear shade of blue Sam’s ever seen, hard and cold, reflecting Sam’s face, open-mouthed and a little bit high and sweaty, hair tousled.

“Well,” the man says, with his fingers in Sam’s belt loops. 

“Well,” Sam replies, swallowing. 

“Let me buy you a drink.”

Sam runs his tongue over the rim of his lips, watching the man’s eyes follow it hungrily. “I’d rather just,” he starts, but the man evidently knows what he means because he’s readjusting his grip and bringing Sam in again, slamming their mouths together, tasting of whiskey and cigarettes and sin.

“I’m Lucifer,” he says, when they’ve pulled away a second time. “Lucifer Morningstar.”

“Sam Winchester.”

Lucifer brings his hand up, folding his fingers around Sam’s and quirking one corner of his lips up. “It’s nice to meet you, Sam,” he says. 

“Yeah.” Sam nods, his cheeks flushed with the heat, lips still wet. “You too.” 

*

Lucifer’s apartment is located exactly three and a half miles away from the Roadhouse. They get there in a hurry, Sam carefully tracing his fingers over the blue veins standing out against Lucifer’s wrist as he drives single-handedly, one eye on the road, the other on Sam. 

“So you’re in college or what?” Lucifer asks as he pulls into the driveway and shuts off his car. 

“Stanford,” Sam says, and brings Lucifer’s wrist up to his mouth, trailing a path down the pale skin with his tongue and lightly following it with his teeth. Lucifer allows this for a moment before pulling away and getting out of the car, heading up to the front door. 

“What are you studying?” he asks, fitting the key into the lock.

Sam tells him, staring at the exposed line of shoulder beneath his jacket, where it runs into Lucifer’s neck. He nods, and flicks on the indoor light.

“Pre-law? Or have you taken the bar exam?”

Sam’s not sure why Lucifer’s even asking him this—there’s only one thing on his mind right now and he’s pretty sure it’s the only thing on Lucifer’s as well—but he tells him anyway, “Pre-law,” and the shorter man nods again, before shutting the door and dropping his keys into a bowl. 

Then he’s pushing Sam against the wall, almost hard enough to crack the plaster, and kissing him with his mouth open, grinding his crotch against Sam’s, pulling his fingers through his hair almost roughly enough to hurt. Sam responds instantly, hooking his arms around Lucifer’s waist and dragging him as close as physically possible, his tongue pulling flavors from Lucifer’s mouth, tasting him and then the hot, sweaty salt of his skin as he moves down to his neck, tracing the pulse beating there with his lips.

“Nhh,” says Lucifer, shedding his jacket in a careless gesture that encourages Sam to do the same. He grabs his hand, pulling him towards the sofa, which is littered with empty beer cans and two magazines, crumpled up behind pillows. Lucifer pushes Sam down onto the cushions and settles himself between his legs, placing his hands on Sam’s broad shoulders and kissing him urgently, rocking his hips forward and tugging on his lower lip with his teeth. 

“I want you,” Lucifer breathes into his ear, and oh god, oh _god,_ Sam can feel himself hardening, dick pressing against the inside of his jeans uncomfortably. 

“Christ,” Sam says, shutting his eyes, and reaches between them to undo the buckle on Lucifer’s belt. 

He’s hot and sweating and shaking all over, fucking _shaking_ with want, and Lucifer bites hard at his collarbone, mouthing filth against his skin while he unzips Sam’s jeans, tugging them down and rutting against his cloth-covered erection. Sam tugs on his belt until it gives, and then his pants are coming off too, until Sam feels them pool around Lucifer’s knees. Then he brings his hands back up to wrap around Lucifer’s arms, steady around Sam’s head, and kisses him, a clash of teeth and tongues and this is nothing like anything Sam has ever done, but oh he doesn’t care, he’s too drunk and too horny and too _everything_ to care, and he lifts his hips up against Lucifer’s, shifting while they kiss, grappling his fingers in dirty blond hair and tugging, eliciting a moan from somewhere deep in Lucifer’s throat.

“Sam,” he breathes out, and then their boxers are off too, and Lucifer has his hand wrapped around Sam’s cock, teasing at the underside with his thumb, sliding up the shaft, at his slit. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” says Sam. 

Lucifer positions himself so that his cock is between Sam’s legs, not quite at his entrance but close enough to send lightning bolts of pure lust up his spine as he thrusts shallowly against Sam’s inner thigh, biting and licking and kissing at every inch of his skin he can reach. He’s still got his hand on Sam, stroking while he grinds himself, and Sam feels his stomach muscles tensing, and he fists his hand hard in Lucifer’s hair and manages a _ohshitfucklucifer_ before he comes, splattering wet and hot and sticky against his stomach and Lucifer’s fingers and the edge of his shirt, which he didn’t quite manage to get off in time. Lucifer keeps rutting against Sam’s thigh, kissing him and letting Sam swallow his hoarse moans before he comes, too, with a shudder and a groan and his face buried against Sam’s shoulder. 

Sam exhales shakily, staring up at the ceiling. For a full minute neither man moves, Lucifer with his head resting halfway on Sam’s chest and Sam with one leg hooked over the back of the sofa, his fingers still loosely curled in Lucifer’s hair.

Then Lucifer mutters something about needing a cigarette and he stands and walks into the kitchen, his shirt not quite hiding his groin. Sam follows him with his eyes and notices, for the first time, what looks like a vintage ’58 Les Paul leaned against the refrigerator, its strap curled up neatly at its base. 

“You play?” he asks, voice wrecked. 

Lucifer comes back in, the cigarette dangling from his fingertips, and sits on the edge of the sofa. “Yeah,” he says, nodding at the guitar and taking a long, heavy drag before breathing out, slate gray smoke circling around their heads. The whole scene is starting to feel a little too stilted for Sam’s liking, and he wonders vaguely how many men Lucifer’s brought back to his apartment like this, how many times his couch has been fucked on and stained and covered in sweat. 

Or maybe it’s just the oncoming sobriety talking.

“I’m in a band,” Lucifer adds after a long moment, his fingers tense on his knee. “No Salvation. We’re trying to get a record deal with Geffen, but it’s not looking like it’s gonna happen.”

“Um,” says Sam, because really, he knows next to nothing about music. Music is Dean’s department—and Sam thinks of how much more at home Dean would be here, with the whiskey and the cigarettes and the guitar and Lucifer and his long, callused fingers. He reaches up and pushes his hand through his hair, tugging absently on the ends, and sits up, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it on the floor, then maneuvering so that he can get his boxers back on without actually standing up and risking losing his balance. “I’m pretty sure plenty of bands can make it without Geffen’s help.”

Lucifer just grunts in response, and Sam’s not sure if he’s said the right thing or not, but he’s being offered the cigarette and he figures it’s okay, it has to be okay. 

Soon enough he’s saying he should go, and Lucifer’s saying why, and Sam’s being offered a place on the couch for the night, “so he won’t have to drive home and risk getting pulled over smelling like sex and weed”. He curls up with his face pressed against the pillow that’s been pressing into his back for a while now, his long legs digging into his abdomen as he struggles to get comfortable, and Lucifer puts his cigarette out in the ashtray before standing up, grabbing his pants and an unopened bottle of beer, heading for the hallway. 

“I’ll drive you back to the bar in the morning so you can get your car,” he says, and Sam nods into the pillow, mumbling his thanks, his head swimming. 

He passes out before Lucifer’s even turned off the light. 

*

_“Dead?” Balthazar sounds accusatory over the phone, like what happened is Sam’s fault, and he flinches, running his finger around the rim of his coffee cup. His eyes are swollen and red from crying all night, and he’s pretty sure he’s running a low-grade fever._

_“Yeah,” he says, voice rough and tired. “Yeah.”_

_“Goddammit,” Balthazar breathes. “That son of a bitch,” and Sam’s pretty sure he hears a sniff, but he doesn’t mention it. “Who’s taking care of the funeral shit?”_

_Sam hesitates. “You are,” he says, finally, and the other man swears forcefully into the phone._

_“Have you told Gabe yet?” he asks. “Or Michael?”_

_“No.”_

_“Well, tell them.” He sounds irritated, and Sam can just picture him running a hand through his tousled blond hair, so much like Lucifer’s, enough to make Sam’s heart ache and a few more tears splash over the bridge of his nose. “Michael will take care of this… fucking…” He pauses, and Sam can hear him grinding his teeth._

_“That son of a bitch,” Balthazar says at length, voice hard, and he hangs up._

*

In the morning, Sam wakes up with one leg on the couch and the other on the floor, his face sliding halfway between the cushions. His head is pounding so hard he thinks it’s going to explode, like an atomic bomb, and there’s a taste in his mouth like someone force-fed him dead animals for a week and then tried to wash it all down with the cheapest liquor possible. 

He thinks he’s going to throw up, but he’s not sure if he can find the bathroom in time to do so. 

He manages to move enough so that his ass is hanging off the sofa, and that’s when the front door opens and a man walks in Sam doesn’t recognize: tall and sinewy and attractive in a sort of offhand way, like he’s aware of how he looks but doesn’t give a shit whether anyone else is. He’s eating a donut and carrying a cup of steaming coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, and he stops short when he sees Sam, but only for a second.

“Well,” he says, shutting the door. “My god, Luce can’t keep his hands off anyone these days, can he?” 

“England,” Sam says, intelligently, noticing the man’s accent at the same time that he falls off the sofa and onto the floor, his head just avoiding contact with the edge of the coffee table.

“At least you’re at a coherency level,” he says, before setting his things down and holding his hand out. “Come on, up we go,” and he boosts Sam into a standing position. 

“Thanks.” Sam doesn’t let go of his hand, shaking it instead, and introduces himself.

“Balthazar Morgenstern,” Balthazar Morgenstern replies, gingerly extracting his hand from Sam’s grasp. “I’m Lucifer’s brother.”

Sam’s eyebrows knit together in a puzzled frown, and Balthazar sighs. “His half-brother, anyway. I was raised in England; came here when I was nineteen.”

A door in the back of the house opens, then, and a few seconds later Lucifer makes his appearance, hair disheveled, bare chested and evidently still half-asleep, rubbing at his eyes. He grunts in Balthazar’s direction and nods at Sam (who really isn’t sure if Lucifer remembers his name), then heads into the kitchen and pours a glass of water from the tap. 

“Balthazar,” Lucifer says after a short silence, draining the glass and licking his lips free of liquid droplets. “You aren’t harassing my guest, I hope?”

Balthazar laughs once, with no real humor, and Sam is suddenly vaguely curious of the relationship between them. Before he can really start to contemplate it, though, another wave of nausea hits him, stronger than the first, and he mumbles an ‘excuse me’ and bolts.

He’s lucky the bathroom door is open. 

By the time he comes out, pale and sweating, mouth rinsed but still tasting like shit, Balthazar has gone again, leaving the Dunkin’ Donuts and coffee behind. Lucifer is sipping from a glass of what Sam thinks is Jack Daniel’s and doesn’t look up as he crosses the room on unsteady legs and picks his pants off the floor. 

“Still want me to take you to get your car, right?”

The question startles Sam, who didn’t think Lucifer had even remembered offering. “No,” he starts, “it’s cool, I can call my brother,” although honestly he’d rather fail all his exams than face Dean laughing at him this morning, calling him ‘lightweight’. 

“It’s no trouble,” Lucifer says to the table. “Really, I have to go to the bar again anyway; set up a gig.” He slides a thumb over the side of his glass, and Sam has a sudden flash of memory—those hands on him last night, rucking up his shirt, trailing over his stomach, his ribs, the hollows of skin around his hipbones. 

He swallows, and remembers to finish zipping up his jeans just as Lucifer glances over at him. In the proper light of the daytime, Sam sees—really _sees_ —that Lucifer is _gorgeous;_ all hard lines and angles, those piercing blue eyes standing out behind shadows and deathly pale skin. He is power and beauty and danger, muscular and raw sensuality and _new,_ something Sam has never seen. A completely different species. 

A corner of his thin lips twitches in a half-smile, and Sam flushes and looks away.

“When,” he starts, voice suddenly hoarse. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Lucifer stands, still shirtless and graceful ( _and Sam never thought he’d call a stocky build ‘graceful’, but_ ) and throws the last bits of alcohol down the sink, along with the ice cubes. “Let me just finish dressing first,” he says, but his eyes flick to the sofa and then to Sam, and when he starts forward, hooking his fingers in Sam’s belt loops and drawing their bodies flush against each other, Sam does not have it in him to protest.

*

They make it to the bar an hour later.

There aren’t a lot of people there at this hour, just Ellen, who owns the bar, and her daughter Jo, and Sam is glad that both women are in the back, unable to see him, the way he’s squinting.

He and Lucifer stand just outside the door, skin still warm with the memory of sex, mouths tasting of nicotine and coffee. Sam shifts, tugging on his hair.

“So,” he says.

“So,” Lucifer says.

“Thanks for dropping me off.” Sam looks at his beat-up truck, glinting in the sunlight. “Um. We should see each other again soon.” _Like maybe right now._

“There’s the gig,” says Lucifer. “It’ll probably be in two weeks or so.”

In two weeks, Sam should really ( _really_ ) start studying, but—

“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “Ellen’s a friend; she’ll let me know. I’ll come.”

Lucifer grins, a brilliant flash of teeth. “You’d better,” he says, glancing at Sam’s crotch before turning and walking inside.

Sam laughs all the way back to his car.

*

_Michael takes the news differently than Balthazar—but then Sam is hardly surprised, considering. He stares hard at Sam the entire time, those scarily intense brown eyes boring into his, hands folded neatly over each other on Sam and Lucifer’s tabletop._

_When Sam finishes explaining, Michael draws in a sharp, tight breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “So which funeral home am I supposed to contact?” he asks. It’s the first time he’s ever not had the answer for something straight away, and if circumstances were different Sam would be amused._

_As it is, he just shrugs and pushes the contact information for the mortician across the table. Michael studies it for a moment before nodding and folding it into his pocket. He stands, starts for the door, and pauses._

_“Sam,” he says, voice uncharacteristically soft. “I… I’m truly sorry it had to happen like this.” His shoulders are tense, and he won’t turn around._

_Sam swallows down a bright flash of anger at the way Michael says it, as if Lucifer’s death had been his fault. “Yes,” he says, tightly. “So’m I.”_

_His tone is dismissal enough, and Michael nods once before slipping out, every bit as silently as he came in._

*

Sam isn’t aware that there are _more_ Morgensterns (or is it Morningstars? Lucifer hasn’t told him anything yet regarding his name and he’s not going to press) until he goes to see No Salvation’s gig at the Roadhouse. He drags Dean along—if only because he needs to be sober tomorrow when he studies and Lucifer is actually really good at getting him shitfaced when they’re alone—and they go backstage together.

Balthazar is there, tuning his guitar, but when he sees Sam and Dean he stops, grins, and calls:

“Luci—two gentlemen here to see you!”

Dean, who hasn’t met the brothers yet, asks coolly, “You’re the pimp, I suppose?”

Balthazar laughs at that, sharply. “Sam,” he says, “you didn’t tell me your brother was such a bundle of joy.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, before Sam can get a word out, “and you didn’t tell me your boyfriend’s brother was fucking Prince William.”

“Oh, I wish I were.” Balthazar makes a face, and Sam chokes down a laugh when he notices the smoldering expression in Dean’s eyes. He elbows his brother in the ribs— _chill, okay_ —and a few seconds later, Lucifer shows up, guitar slung across his shoulder. He’s wearing a black shirt that’s been ripped in strategic places, dark jeans, and a leather jacket. His hair is tousled—Sam wonders how much of that is still from this morning—and he has a cigarette clamped between his teeth.

His eyes slide up and down Dean’s body and the corner of his mouth twitches. 

“So you’re Dean,” he says, stabbing his cigarette out on the brick wall behind Balthazar’s head and folding his arms across his chest. “S’nice to meet you.” 

Dean’s eyes are narrowed, and Sam has to kick him to get him to shake Lucifer’s hand. He’s opening his mouth to say something (with the _nastiest_ expression on his face, leaving Sam wondering how he could’ve ever thought his brother and his lover would get along) when another door opens, off to the side, and three men enter the room. Sam’s never seen any of them, but he’s pretty sure they’re Balthazar and Lucifer’s brothers. They’ve all got the same hairstyle—although two of them are dark-haired—and the same stride, the same head tilt, the same cocky expression. 

The tallest one walks up to Sam and says, “Michael Morgenstern.” The way he says it, Sam’s pretty sure he’s missing out on something, and sure enough, when he glances over his shoulder, Lucifer has an expression on his face that is one part irritated and three parts _say something._

So he holds his hand out, straightening his shoulders, and introduces himself.

“Oh,” Michael says, a look of dawning clarity coming into his rich dark eyes. “You’re the one my brother’s been banging for up of two weeks now, huh?”

Dean and Lucifer both go tense ( _albeit for completely different reasons_ ) but Sam just laughs, relaxed and easy, digging his fingers into the hem of his jacket and praying to god his face doesn’t betray how much he’s already starting to dislike this guy. 

“If there’s another Sam Winchester around here, I don’t know about him,” he says, and Michael nods shortly before turning to Balthazar and striking up a conversation about the technicalities for their show tonight.

Sam’s pretty sure he’s just passed some sort of test.

After that, the atmosphere seems to lighten up considerably. Lucifer introduces Sam to Gabriel and Castiel, his cousin who isn’t part of the band (“I’m just here for moral support,” he says, and Lucifer actually laughs at that, like it’s a running joke between them), and Dean seems pretty interested in talking to Castiel so Sam tells his brother he’ll see him later and they walk out into the crowd together.

Then it’s just No Salvation and Sam, and Lucifer’s got one arm wrapped around Sam’s shoulders, like he’s daring his brothers to say anything, and Michael’s watching them with something like a sneer twisting his mouth, and Gabriel’s flipping his drumsticks over and over in his hand and chewing on a piece of chocolate he retrieved from his jacket, and Balthazar, still fiddling with his guitar, just looks exhausted, and a little bit bored, like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

Sam doesn’t know a lot about music, but he knows this isn’t how a starting band is supposed to look. 

Eventually Michael says something about a “band meeting” before the show, and although Lucifer’s fingers tense on Sam’s shoulder, he moves, allowing Sam to walk towards the door. 

“See you,” Sam says, and Lucifer nods once, his eyes lingering on Sam for a moment before returning to his brother.

In the bar, Sam finds Dean and Castiel already sitting together at a booth, and he walks up to them just as Castiel is saying, “My cousins are… difficult at the best of times,” which makes Sam think that Dean’s doing that annoying ‘protective-older-brother’ thing again, asking about the Morgenstern family. But he doesn’t say anything, and neither does Castiel or Dean, and for about ten minutes the three of them sit there together, talking, until No Salvation takes the stage. 

Any tension Sam sensed backstage is gone—out here, the band is pure chemistry: Lucifer howling into the microphone, guitar slung low over his waist; Balthazar squeezing out chords on his Telecaster, moving from one side of the stage to the other; Michael, with his fingers running up and down the neck of his bass; and Gabriel, in the back, hair falling in his face as he hammers out a steady rhythm. They play five original songs and five covers, and by the time they’re done the Roadhouse is on its feet and screaming for more, and Sam’s drenched in sweat from jumping around so much, his hair a mess over his eyes as he watches his lover shout something into the microphone at the crowd before heading back with his brothers. 

Dean punches Sam in the arm and says, “Not half bad, hey, Sammy?” and Sam laughs, shaking his head and grabbing his glass for a final swallow. Castiel mentions something to Dean about the bar, and the two of them head over to where Jo is serving drinks. Sam slaps down a twenty on the table before elbowing his way through the crowd to get backstage. 

“Did we do all right, then?” Balthazar asks him, face half-hidden by a towel, but Sam is walking towards Lucifer and pressing himself up against him, Lucifer’s bare chest on Sam’s shirt, his arms snaking all the way around Lucifer’s torso.

“Holy shit,” he breathes into his hair. “Luce, that was _fantastic_.”

“Hardly,” Lucifer says, but he’s smiling, and a second later he’s grabbing Sam’s hand and pulling him into a private room off to the side. It’s dark and a little bit cramped, with a janitor’s mop in the corner and what looks like three amplifiers stacked against the wall, but Lucifer finds the light switch and then he’s pressing Sam against the door, locking it, and kissing him roughly, running his hand through his hair, biting his lower lip before pulling away, barely half an inch between them. His fingers are freshly rough from the guitar, and a little bit cut on the tips, and he watches, eyes narrowed a little, head tilted, as Sam licks the blood slowly from his skin. 

Then he kisses Sam again, more gently than before, and rocks their hips together in a slow, tantalizing movement. There’s an expression in his eyes that Sam doesn’t recognize, something almost like longing, or maybe sadness—though what Lucifer would have to be sad about, exactly, Sam’s not sure. 

“You’ll come to more shows?” Lucifer asks, fingers trailing down the line of Sam’s neck, eyes focused on his collarbone. He’s asking _you’ll stay, right?_ and part of Sam wants to cry at this sudden, unexpected display of emotion, however guarded Lucifer’s trying to keep it. 

But Lucifer doesn’t talk about his feelings, and Sam isn’t so good with it himself, so he just nods, murmurs, “Yes,” and kisses the ghost of a smile off Lucifer’s lips, tasting alcohol and cigarettes and the spicy flavor of want. 

*

He spends most of his nights at Lucifer’s, listening to the quiet hum of his guitar strings as he plays, or to the soft croon of his voice, or the scratch of his pencil on paper as he writes down lyrics. It provides an easy, background noise to his studying—when he’s able to get any done, which is rare these days. Sam stares at words like _paralegal_ or _perjury,_ and he finds himself idly trailing his pen in the margins of his notebook ten minutes later, his hair pushed off his neck while Lucifer presses soft kisses against his skin, wordlessly asking him to come to bed. Which he does, most of the time. He likes it better in Lucifer’s room, where the sofa cushions won’t dig into his back every time he moves, and where there’s a door with a lock that Balthazar doesn’t have the key to, so he can’t walk in on them sleepily fucking in the early morning hours. 

Sam also goes to every No Salvation show, even when Dean and Castiel don’t, inhaling the heady stench of cigarettes and alcohol and sitting as close to the stage as he can without actually being on it himself. In the beginning he tried bringing his notecards, so he could study between songs, but someone obnoxious and drunk spilled liquor on them, and anyway he was hardly able to concentrate, so now he just goes empty-handed, gets a beer, and yells himself hoarse when Lucifer and his brothers take the stage. 

He discovers that Lucifer isn’t much of a talker, at least not where his feelings are concerned—when he has something to say in that regard, he says it, and that’s the end of that, no questions asked. Most of what he likes to communicate he does physically—brushing Sam’s arm to say ‘hello’, biting his earlobe, running his fingers down Sam’s legs underneath a table. Sam begins to pick up on this, and finds himself speaking less when he’s alone with him, preferring to nuzzle the side of his neck, or trail his hand across the space of skin between Lucifer’s navel and his groin, or outline a pattern on his palm, an entire city map sprung up beneath Sam’s thumb. 

He likes to watch Lucifer write songs; the concentration he puts into it, the way his brow furrows as he stares down at the page, how he grips the pencil between his middle finger and his thumb and taps it on the edge of the notebook, jaw tightening in annoyance if the right words don’t come immediately. Sam presses his fingers against the back of Lucifer’s neck, kneading into the tense muscles, kissing his shoulder, stroking his hair, simultaneously relaxing and distracting him. When Lucifer asks for a cup of coffee, Sam gets it for him, brewing black and bitter in a ceramic cup that reads _Caffeine Can be Hot as Hell._ Likewise, if Sam is actually studying for once, Lucifer brings him slices of apple and tall, thin glasses of sparkling cider, enticing him to stay awake as well as feel slightly buzzed after about an hour. 

They learn each other, quietly, and some mornings Sam wakes up and cannot remember what life was like before this.

*

_Gabriel is the most visibly shaken by Sam’s news; out of all his brothers, he’s the only one who allows himself to shed a tear; to grip the countertop at the Chocorama (his favorite place to frequent these days, with his love for sweets and unnaturally fast metabolism) and ask the server, in a broken voice, for five more fudge squares._

_Once he and Sam are seated at a back table, he draws a hand down his face, composing himself. “When?” he asks._

_“About a week ago,” mutters Sam into his coffee cup. It’s still impossible, waking up alone, fingers stretched automatically into the space where Lucifer should be, but isn’t. It hurts like hell, hurts worse than Sam ever imagined it would. It’s aching, now, talking to Gabriel; he wishes they all lived far away, like Balthazar does, the fucker; wishes it could all just be phone calls and Kleenex pressed to his nose while he curls up between the sheets with_ Days of Our Lives _running low on the television and empty boxes of McDonald’s scattered around his legs._

_“Fucking Christ,” Gabriel says. “Did he leave a note?”_

_Sam draws in a shaky breath. “No. He—” but the words get stuck somewhere between his esophagus and his mouth, and he finds himself crying in the middle of a goddamn chocolate shop, his head hung low over the table, shoulders trembling._

_Gabriel presses a piece of fudge into his hand, still flat on the table, and murmurs, “You don’t need to do this to yourself, Sam. It wasn’t your fault.”_

_Sam bites into the chocolate without answering, his now-red eyes focused somewhere over Gabriel’s left shoulder, and wonders how in the hell the man can say that._

*

Sam learns early on that the brother Lucifer hates the most is Michael, who is four years older than him, six years older than Gabriel, and eleven months and two days older than Balthazar. Not that he really has a healthy relationship with _any_ of his siblings (he and Balthazar fight ugly and sarcastic, subtly bringing out old wounds that Sam is afraid to ask more about; and he mostly ignores Gabriel except if they’re on stage) but it’s Michael he argues with the most, Michael who gets under his skin and digs around until he emerges, satisfied and shining, while Lucifer seethes and loathes in the corner. 

There’s something _off_ between them, something that goes beyond just their constant bickering and grating. Sam doesn’t like it, doesn’t feel comfortable watching them together—the way Michael runs to be by Lucifer when they’re performing, more often than he goes by Gabriel on the drums or Balthazar, hunched over his guitar; the way he leans against Lucifer’s concavely arched spine, sliding his fingers along the neck of his bass while Lucifer screams into the microphone, the stand pressed hard against his crotch, sweat beading on his torso, in his hair. He doesn’t like the way Michael looks at Lucifer, he doesn’t like the way Michael treats him, he doesn’t like _Michael,_ period, but no one else seems to notice anything, so he keeps his mouth shut. Sam may be Lucifer’s lover, the only person outside of the band allowed backstage before the concerts, but he’s not exactly a ‘fully accepted’ member of the Morgenstern family yet. 

He doesn’t want to fuck up his tentative friendships with Balthazar, Gabriel, and Castiel by implying that something is going on when it’s really not.

He tries talking to Lucifer about it, once. They’re lying together on the sofa in Lucifer’s apartment, and Lucifer is between Sam’s legs, writing lyrics while Sam studies for his latest test, the book propped up against Lucifer’s back. The thin cloth of Lucifer’s boxers is the only thing separating his ass from Sam’s cock, and both of them are fully aware of this, which is why Sam seizes the chance before anything else can start and blurts:

“I don’t like your brother.”

Lucifer laughs once, sharply, the way he always does when he’s confused. “Yeah? Get in line, love.”

“No, no, I mean…” Sam hedges, pressing his hand against his eyes, trying to think of a neutral way to put it, what he’s feeling. “Michael fucking _scares_ me, man. He’s _weird_.” He’s saying it into Lucifer’s hair, so his voice is muffled, but Lucifer hears him anyway and turns halfway, a tiny frown creasing the space between his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, our whole family is—”

Frustrated, Sam bites his lower lip, tugging on his hair. “I mean I’m afraid he’s going to hurt you, Luce. I don’t like—I don’t like the way he acts around you. The way he talks to you. I don’t.” He breathes in, a little shakily. “Michael’s like a demon in a crowd of normal people, and he looks exactly like everyone else, which makes it so much harder to identify him, and so much easier for him to blend in and kill outright if he needs to.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows go up. “Jesus, Sam,” he says, splaying his fingers over Sam’s hip. 

Sam shakes his head. “Sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t mean to come off that strongly, I just. I’m just not sure Michael’s fully _sane_.”

Another sharp laugh from Lucifer, though Sam can feel his muscles tensing. “Michael’s always been a little bit different,” he says, “a little more ‘shoot first ask questions later’. But he’s okay—we’re brothers, you know? We fight.” He trails a finger slowly down Sam’s leg, the way he likes it, and Sam feels his eyes shutting of their own accord. 

“Yeah, but—”

“Dean’s four years older than you,” Lucifer points out. “He fights with you, doesn’t he?”

_Yes, but not like that, not with his face an inch from mine and his words practically screaming ‘fuck me’,_ Sam thinks. “Yeah,” he says out loud, and Lucifer nods.

“So it’s okay,” he says, sounding a little like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Sam. 

Then, almost as an afterthought, he brings his fingers back up, resting them on Sam’s knee, and he says, “But actually, Sam—you’re okay, right?” He’s doing the damn Morgenstern head-tilt, the one that seems to have been seared into their DNA, and Sam hesitates. He hesitates, but this ‘talking’ thing is not his strong point, nor is it Lucifer’s, and he doesn’t want to get too deep into a topic he’s not even sure he really wants to have explained, so he just swallows; nods. 

“I’m fine.”

“Good,” Lucifer murmurs. He allows his gaze to linger on Sam’s for a moment longer—those intensely blue irises, like looking into the northern eye wall of a goddamn category five hurricane, like being struck by lightning and not wanting to move, like being stretched out until you’re at once too big and too small for your own body—then turns back around, spine on Sam’s stomach, hand on his leg. 

Five minutes later, Sam is mouthing vocabulary words to himself, cheek pressed against Lucifer’s head, and Lucifer is scrawling lazy guitar notes onto a sheet of lined paper, his free hand resting on the elegant bones of Sam’s left foot. 

*

_The second call comes one week and five days after the first, jarring Sam out of a fitful sleep. He nearly breaks his hand trying to grab the receiver (he’s never stopped hoping it’ll be Lucifer’s voice on the other end of the line) and gasps out:_

_“Hello?”_

_Pause. “Mr. Samuel Winchester?”_

_It’s not Zachariah, but it’s someone official, Sam can tell by the tone of his voice. He swallows, breathing hard, like he’s just run a marathon. “Yeah?”_

_“Sir, we have autopsied the body. We’d like you to come back to the station so we can discuss some things with you about the results.”_

_Oh, fucking_ Christ. _Sam presses his hand to his eyes, feeling a headache starting to form at the base of his skull. “Um. Shouldn’t you be contacting Michael Morgenstern about that? Since he’s head of the funeral arrangements—”_

_“You, sir,” the voice interjects, “are the one we were instructed to call.”_

_“Yeah.” His eyes are starting to water. “Yeah, no, I’ll be there in thirty.” He hangs up the phone and crawls out of bed. His muscles feel like they’ve been atrophied, he’s in so much physical pain from the loss. He stares at the bathroom, where the shower is, decides it’s a waste of time to even try, and slips on an old t-shirt instead, one of the button-down flannel ones Lucifer used to wear around the house on Saturday mornings. He goes to his closet and tugs on a pair of jeans he finds laying crumpled on the floor, only realizing after he’s gotten them on that these are Lucifer’s jeans, too small for him. But he’s already expended enough energy by getting the clothes on, so he just sits there, staring blankly at the wall, feeling the jeans riding tight against his crotch, chafing his calves._

_The phone rings again an hour later, and Sam is still sitting in the middle of the floor, running his thumb over the frayed edges of the jeans and wondering vaguely why he’s not in his car yet. When he answers, the unfamiliar voice barks, “Winchester, where the hell are you?” and he says:_

_“I’m coming,” then snickers at the words._

_“You better be,” says the voice, not amused._

_Sam mutters an acquiescing sort of sound and hangs up, then forces himself to stand and tug Lucifer’s jeans off, finding a pair of his own and stepping into them, surprised at how loose they hang around his legs. He’s lost some weight, and he can’t remember when that happened._

_He goes in the bathroom long enough to comb some tangles out of his hair, then pulls on his sneakers and heads downtown._

_*_

_“They wouldn’t fit,” he says at the station, looking Zachariah directly in the eye, daring him to object._

_There are two new officers standing beside Zachariah at his desk: an overweight black man and a slightly pretty woman who Sam assumes is his wife. They both frown, first at each other and then at Zachariah, who just shrugs before turning to Sam, leaking oily condescension and the faint scent of cheap aftershave._

_“What wouldn’t fit?” he asks._

_“Luce’s jeans,” Sam says, staring at the floor. “That’s why I’m late. Because they wouldn’t fit me.”_

_The two new officers exchange glances, eyebrows raised, and then the man moves around the desk and places his hand on Sam’s shoulder. Sam jerks back, head whipping up, eyes dead, and snarls softly, “Don’t touch me.”_

_The man backs up half a step, and great, now he’s condescending too. Sam might as well dive into a vat of acid and have done with it._

_“My name’s Uriel,” he says._

_“Urinal?” Sam repeats, sounding simultaneously amused and a little bit baffled._

_Uriel shuts his eyes. “No,” he says, like this is a conversation he’s had many times. “Uriel. And this is my wife, Raphaela.”_

_“S’nice to meet you,” Sam mutters, not meaning it._

_“Likewise,” says Raphaela, in a voice that clearly implies she wants nothing more than to see Sam’s head on a pike._

_Zachariah stands, then, grabbing a set of keys and heading for the door that leads to the hallway. “Let’s go get this over with,” he says. “We really need for Mr. Winchester to see this, remember?” His eyes dart between Uriel and Raphaela, like he’s daring them to say ‘no’, but they just shrug and follow him._

_Sam hesitates, then goes too, feeling like his entire world is shrinking around him, and he’s the only thing staying normal-sized. As they walk through the door and down the hallway, he has a vague sense of déjà vu, his eyes adjusting to the dim lights, nose picking up on the scent of chemicals and blood._

_He hates it in here, this fucking cold chamber of death._

_By the time they get to the last room, he’s shivering, muscles tensing uncontrollably as he stands waiting for Zachariah to unlock the door. Uriel and Raphaela both have bored expressions on their faces, like they see this shit a thousand times a day and just want it to be over with, and Sam wants to shove them against the wall, to scream at them until his voice breaks that Lucifer is just a name to them but he was Sam’s whole fucking world, he was everything Sam had and he’s gone now, and do they realize how much it hurts, the feeling like your soul’s been ripped in half?_

_He wouldn’t wish it on anyone._

_The door is open now, and the four of them walk in. Lucifer’s lying on a metal table, body still covered by a white sheet, and Sam shudders, remembering how he looks underneath it. He clenches his fingers inside the pocket of his jeans, willing himself to stay still._

_“Lucifer’s autopsy revealed a major concussion upon impact,” Zachariah reads off the coroner’s report, “as well as severe hemorrhaging in the moments before death. There were three broken ribs, a punctured lung, and his skull was cracked in two different places. The bite marks, sustained after death, more than likely were acquired via wild animal.”_

_Sam’s entire body shudders involuntarily. He imagines Lucifer’s car, wrapped around the tree for days before the police found it; imagines a bear, maybe, or a mountain lion, forcing its way in through the window, ripping up the seatbelt with its huge claws before breaking his chest open, licking away the blood, eating chunks of flesh._

_“—drugs in his system,” Zachariah is saying, now, and Sam shakes his head, swallowing down a wave of nausea at the mental image his brain has helpfully provided and blinking his way into the present._

_“What?”_

_“There were also a copious amount of drugs found in his system,” Zachariah repeats. “Nicotine, opiates—”_

_“Cocaine,” Uriel interjects._

_“—Yes, and marijuana. Hashish.” Zachariah shuts the file, looking at Sam for the first time since they’ve come into the room. “A rather alarming amount of narcotics, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Winchester?”_

_Sam can feel his chest tightening, but he keeps his expression neutral. “You’re the law enforcement officer, you tell me.”_

_Zachariah smiles tightly. “You wouldn’t happen to have contact information with whoever it is that sold Mr. Morgenstern these drugs, would you?”_

_“Morningstar,” Sam mutters._

_“What?”_

_“His last name is—was—Morningstar. Not Morgenstern. He fucking hated that name.”_

_“Okay, whatever.” Zachariah looks like he’s developing a headache of his own. “Do you know who sold Mr. Morningstar these drugs?”_

_(Of course Sam knows. He could say the name, the number used to reach him, in his sleep, despite the fact that he hasn’t used in upward of two months. He can feel his skin crawling just thinking about him, the casual way he’d talk about his clients’ deaths, like they meant literally nothing to him aside from the money they could put in his wallet.)_

_“No,” he says, coolly, looking from Zachariah to Uriel to Raphaela. “I have no idea.”_

_Uriel opens his mouth, but Zachariah cuts him off:_

_“I think we’re done here, then. Thank you, Samuel, for your time.” He holds his hand out, but Sam won’t take it, just turns and walks out of the room as fast as he can._

_And makes himself wait until he’s in the parking lot, behind his car, before falling to his knees and vomiting up every last ounce of food in his stomach._

*

“So I found us a manager.” 

Michael says this one evening when he and his brothers and Sam are sitting around in Lucifer’s apartment, half concentrating on a game of poker. Cigarette smoke curls hazy and blue around their heads, catching in the half-light of the dim fluorescent bulb overhead. 

Balthazar raises an eyebrow. “You found a manager for the band,” he repeats, a little skeptically. “Don’t you think that should’ve been, I don’t know, a mutually agreed-on decision?”

Michael rolls his eyes. “I didn’t say I’d _hired_ him already, you ass. I said I _found_ him.”

“Well, that’s fantastic,” Balthazar replies, rolling his eyes back at Michael in a way that holds too much irritation to be even remotely affectionate. “Who _is_ he?”

“His name’s Crowley,” Michael says, pulling a card from the center of the table. “He started out working for Geffen, but he’s branched since then. He’s got an independent record label now.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“You don’t have to be anything.” Michael glares at Balthazar for a moment, his gaze saying something his lips are not, and then he turns to Gabriel and Lucifer. “Do you two want to meet him, or are we all on the same page as London Calling over here?”

Lucifer slides a handful of dimes into the center of the table and pushes his hand through his hair. He glances at Sam, who shrugs. ( _What kind of a person would Michael hire?_ ) 

“I’m in, I suppose,” he says.

“I’d like assurance that there will be free chocolate provided,” Gabriel says, eyes trained on his cards.

Michael’s lips twitch into a half-sneer. “Yeah,” he says, answering Gabriel but looking straight at Balthazar. “There will be.” He holds his gaze for so long that Sam, watching them, starts to feel uncomfortable. Then Balthazar lets out a defeated sigh and tosses his hand on the table.

“Fine,” he snaps. “I’ll meet him.” He stands, gestures at his cards. “I fold, by the way. You Americans can’t play poker worth _shit_ compared to the UK.”

“Maybe you should go back there, then,” Michael mutters, but Balthazar either doesn’t hear him or pretends not to as he goes in the kitchen and grabs another beer. 

*

As it turns out, Crowley is an okay guy—short and talkative and British, he wears dark suits and, in his words, “likes to do favors for people”. His label is called Crossroads Records, and he takes an instant shine to the band, but he evidently favors Lucifer, and “Lucifer’s moose of a boyfriend”. Michael glares at both of them as Crowley chats them up backstage, easy and laughing, but everything’s okay after that—any suspicions Sam might’ve initially had are eradicated, and they agree to go to Crowley’s offices in about two weeks and sign on, reserve a recording room, and become a proper band. 

That night is the first and only time Sam ever hears Michael speak civilly to any of his brothers. He’s polite and courteous to Lucifer, Balthazar, even Gabriel, and it’s a while before Sam realizes that Michael is afraid of what Lucifer might tell Crowley about him, should he continue acting like a little shit. 

It’s hilarious to watch, but Sam doesn’t say a word. 

*

_He calls Crowley, halfway across the world, and can practically see the phone bill rising before his eyes. It’s a long time before the phone stops ringing, the answering machine picking up the call:_

_“You’ve reached Crowley, head of Crossroads Records. I’m not here right now—obviously, you twit—so just leave a message, and if I like you I’ll call back.” There’s the beep, and Sam takes a breath._

_“Uh. Hey, Crowley. It’s Sam Winchester. I don’t know if you remember me; it’s been a long time since we—anyway, I’m just calling because. Um.” He sucks his lower lip over his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut. “Lucifer… Lucifer Morningstar, the lead singer of No Salvation? Is dead. He died about two weeks ago.” Sam doesn’t say_ two weeks, four days, and seventeen hours, _though he knows that to be the exact time since he received the first phone call. “He was in a car—a car crash.” He’s quiet for a minute, swallowing back a fresh onset of tears, then he finishes up with a quick “call me back at this number if you want” before almost slamming the phone down._

_He has no idea why the hell he did that. He has no idea why Crowley would care._

*

One weekend, close to Sam’s birthday, he’s just coming out of Stanford and heading back to the apartment he and Dean still legally share—although these days he’s practically living with Lucifer, while Castiel has pretty much moved in with Dean—when he sees a familiar car pull up in front of the university. He starts to smile, automatically, then stops, realizing that _no,_ this is a _bad_ thing; Lucifer’s timing is off by about seven hours, because Sam needs to study. He’s failed his last three exams, and if he fails this one, he’s out, and he can forget getting a degree, can forget the bar exam, can forget any of it. 

But Lucifer’s already getting out of the car, and Sam shoulders his bag and walks over to him, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. “Hey, Luce,” he says, leaning in to kiss him on the temple. “What’s going on?”

“Sam,” says Lucifer, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “I need to talk to you.” There’s something in his tone that gets Sam’s attention, and he frowns, tugging on his hair. 

“What?” he hedges, listening to the footsteps of his friends getting closer, hoping they won’t try and intrude. “Did I leave my socks in the bathroom again or something, ‘cause I could’ve sworn I picked them up—”

“No,” Lucifer interrupts, and for a second his gaze falls over Sam’s shoulder, where Jess and the others are now gathered, staring in curiosity, Sam knows, at Sam’s mysterious boyfriend, who they have heard a lot about but never actually met. “No, it’s not that, it’s something—else.” He tilts his head. “Can we go back to the apartment?” 

“I don’t have time,” Sam says, feeling a strange twinge in his chest at the way Lucifer’s looking at him, an emotion in his eyes Sam cannot identify. “I have to study. Maybe later?”

Lucifer hesitates. “We could talk here,” he suggests. “Five seconds, Sam.”

“I told you, I’m—I don’t have time.” Sam doesn’t mean to sound irritated, honestly, but it creeps into his voice, brought on by too little sleep and too much stress. In addition to his studying (or lack thereof) Sam also has to worry about No Salvation—they still haven’t gotten a reservation at Crowley’s offices, and Lucifer spends a lot of his time with Sam bitching about his incompetent siblings, and how much better he could do it if he was a solo artist. It grates on Sam’s nerves, and they’ve started fighting more often because of it—which Sam hates, because he hates fighting with Lucifer and seeing that momentary loathing in his eyes—but the post-argument sex is fucking _incredible._ So he deals.

Lucifer’s eyes fall again on Sam’s friends, and something shadowed and dark flashes over his face. Then it’s gone, and he’s setting his mouth in a tight, almost invisible line. “Fine,” he says, coolly. “Forget it, then.” He pulls his keys out and unlocks his doors, and okay, _what the hell?_

Sam glances at his watch, lets out an exasperated sigh, and walks around to the driver’s side of the car, grabbing Lucifer’s wrist so he won’t get in. 

“What’s going on, man?” Sam asks, voice low. “You know I have exams.”

Lucifer glances at Sam for half a second before dropping his gaze to somewhere on Sam’s left pectoral. “I know you have time for them—” gesture at Jess and the others—“but not for me.”

Sam frowns. “Hey,” he says, “that’s not fair, Luce. I practically fucking live with you. You know how I get around you, though—I can’t concentrate on my lawyer crap when we’re together.” He half hopes it will soften Lucifer, just a little, but his gaze doesn’t waver, and he jerks his hand out of Sam’s grasp, folding his arms across his chest.

“The _one time_ I need to talk to you—”

“This is _not_ the only time you’ve needed to talk to me, and it’s hardly my fault you decided to show up at the last minute—”

“—you can’t even spare five fucking minutes to hear what I have to say.”

Sam shuts his eyes, drawing in a sharp breath. Lucifer can be such a _child_ sometimes. “I need to study to get out of Stanford. It’s just gonna take five hours, maybe six at the most. I’ll come over later—”

“No! No, forget it, Sam.” Lucifer attempts to open his car door again, and Sam shoots his hand out, slamming it against the glass, trapping Lucifer almost flush against his body. For several seconds, neither man says anything; both very aware of the close proximity of their chests, of their hips and groins and the way Lucifer’s leg is halfway between Sam’s. 

Then Lucifer shifts, shoving Sam to one side, and stares down at his feet again, scuffing up the pavement. “It’s not important,” he says, more to himself than to anyone else. “Just go do your lawyer thing, if that’s what you have to do.”

Sam’s gnawing on his lower lip now, tasting blood, so exasperated and annoyed and about five seconds away from ripping his hair out. “Would you just tell me already, Lucifer—!”

Abruptly, Lucifer swings his head up, gaze meeting Sam’s, and he looks torn between fury and irritation at Sam and some awful, internalized anger at himself. “I wanted you to have this, you _shit_ ,” he snarls, and throws a small, metal object at Sam’s chest, before opening his car door so violently it almost falls off its hinges. “I wanted to give it to you with some sort of goddamn _speech,_ but just take it and do whatever the hell you want—throw it in the Pacific for all I care.” He slides in the driver’s seat, slams the door shut, and drives off, iPod deck blaring Shinedown’s _Amaryllis_ album so loudly Sam can hear it when Lucifer is half a block away. 

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until Jess walks up behind him, puts her hand on his shoulder. “You okay?” she asks, and he nods, shrugging her off. 

“‘M fine,” he mutters, and means it until he looks down and notices what Lucifer threw at him. 

Twenty minutes later, he’s parking his car in a spray of gravel in front of Lucifer’s apartment, lunging out and running to the front door. It’s unlocked, and he storms in, ignoring the startled look Balthazar gives him from the couch and walking straight into the kitchen, where Lucifer is rummaging through the refrigerator. He grabs his shoulder, and Lucifer doesn’t have time to react before Sam is hauling him to a standing position and slamming him against the counter, kissing him so roughly their teeth clash. He’s still shaking, and he doesn’t know why. He’s furious, and he’s red-hot all over, tasting Lucifer in every crevice of his mouth. 

“You _ass_ ,” he says, voice hoarse, lips barely an inch from Lucifer’s. “You _know_ I’d move in with you in a heartbeat.” He holds up the key, with its tiny ‘S.W.’ initials scratched into the head, and feels his eyes filling up. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to _ask_.”

Lucifer looks startled, emotions playing fast across his face, like he can’t decide what he’s comfortable with Sam seeing, even after all this time. He blinks, swallows, and shakes his head.

“You come here so often, I figured, why not make it official?” he manages after a bit, and there’s enough of an apology in the back of his voice to make Sam smile, barely. 

“I can have my stuff here by the end of the week,” is all he says, and Lucifer visibly relaxes, all his muscles going slack against the hard press of Sam’s body.

“Hey, if you two lovebirds are going to continue, will one of you pass the popcorn?” Balthazar calls. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam and Lucifer say at the same time, without turning away from each other, and a few seconds later Sam has his forehead pressed against Lucifer’s, and he’s breathing in deeply, chest swelling like the ocean, the key digging grooves into his palm. 

*

The week after he moves in with Lucifer, it’s his birthday, and to celebrate Sam goes to the Roadhouse with the Morgensterns, Dean, and Castiel. No concert, just a huge dinner and drinks, and afterwards they go back ( _to their house!_ ) and curl up on the couch together, their legs intertwined, and go at a few rounds of _Silent Hill._ Sam beats Lucifer twice, and Lucifer beats Sam once, and then Sam turns off the console and moves so that his body is pressed against Lucifer’s, head tucked into the warm space between his neck and his shoulder. 

“Luce,” Sam starts. 

“Yeah?”

“I just. I wanted to say how grateful I am to have you. To have met you. You’re pretty cool, man.”

Lucifer laughs, chest rumbling softly against Sam’s side. “You’re ‘pretty cool’ too, Sam,” he says, and twines his fingers in his long, long hair. He shifts, and Sam stretches himself out over Lucifer, managing to shed his jacket with one hand while keeping the other pressed between them, in the heat of their bodies. 

Later, lying beside Lucifer, watching him shine bright as his last name, it occurs to Sam that he’s fallen in love, and he has no idea when that happened. 

*

_“Has Michael made funeral arrangements yet?” Balthazar asks._

_Sam grunts, staring down at the floor, balancing the phone between his shoulder and his ear. “What do you think?” he asks, voice rough on the edges, digging his house key into his palm._

_Balthazar snorts derisively. “Two weeks,” he says, and Sam can see him shaking his head. “You should’ve done it, lawyer.”_

_“Yeah, well.” Sam breathes out, static in the phone. He curls his toes into the mattress, feeling them indent the soft material. He’s pretty sure if he were to inhale hard enough, he would still be able to smell faint traces of Lucifer lingering in the sheets._

_“Well, I’m coming for the funeral, whenever it is,” Balthazar says, after a long silence._

_Sam nods, then remembers Balthazar can’t see him. “Okay,” he says quietly, and hangs up. The phone is heavy in his hand, and he hesitates before laying it down on the pillow, rather than walking all the way across his room to set it in its cradle._

_He wonders if sadness this thick could smother him in his sleep._

*

No Salvation signs their contract at Crossroads Records, and to celebrate Crowley takes them to a giant party at his house. Most of the people there Sam doesn’t recognize—there’s Ruby, a grade above him, with her hair dyed platinum blonde; and there’s Meg, latched onto another unfamiliar guy’s arm; but he doesn’t know anyone else—and he sticks close to Lucifer for the first half of the night, his shirt clinging to him in the damp heat of the room. He’s on his second bottle of beer, face pressed into the crook of Lucifer’s neck as he tries in vain to block out the screeching guitar solo coming from a speaker by his left foot, when he feels a nudge on his shoulder. 

“Hey, moose,” and it’s Balthazar standing over him, holding a joint, arms folded across his chest. “You and Luce want to leave yet?”

“Uh,” says Sam. “No, why?”

“Wrong answer!” Michael shouts from somewhere behind Balthazar’s left shoulder. “You and Lucifer _want_ to leave. You want to come with us. We’re going to Crowley’s friend’s apartment; we’re gonna get fucking _smashed,_ man.” It’s the first time he’s ever spoken in an even remotely pleasant way to Sam, and it startles him. 

Lucifer looks up. “Sam and I are just fine where we are,” he says, and there’s no mistaking the hostility in his tone. 

“Hey, relax, little brother. I was just _asking_.” Michael sneers at Lucifer. “You’re so _uptight_ for someone in a fucking _band_.” He glances at Sam. “You wanna come, maybe? Let fucking Mother Teresa stew where he is?”

“Michael,” Lucifer says, a warning.

Sam tilts his beer back against his lips and allows it to slide, cool, down his throat. The party is too loud, too much, and he shrugs, a little drunk, a little reckless. “I might,” he says to Michael. “I might.”

Lucifer stares at him, blue eyes vibrant and clear even in the smoky haze of Crowley’s house. “You’re going to go?”

“Why not?” Sam shrugs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You should come with us, Luce. I’d have more fun if you were there.” 

“You don’t even know the person to whom my brothers are referring.” There’s a sharp edge to Lucifer’s voice, and his expression, and Sam can feel his muscles tense beneath his shirt, a sign that he’s borderline about to lose it. “And I’m pretty sure they don’t, either.” 

“We just met him,” Michael says. “Through Crowley. His name’s Alastair. He’s okay. He’s got a shitload of drugs back at his place—”

“No,” Lucifer says immediately, something like fear flashing beneath his gaze for half a second. 

Sam swallows, eyes darting between Lucifer and Michael and Balthazar. He wipes his sweaty palms on his knees, hesitates, then stands up. 

Lucifer stares at him. “You’re going anyway,” he says.

He nods, tugging on his hair. His head is _pounding._ “I’m going,” he says. “Just for a couple hours though. I’ll go home soon, okay?”

Lucifer holds his gaze steady for a few seconds, then looks away, his leg shaking against the sofa cushions. “Do what you want, Sam,” he murmurs, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. 

“We’ll have him home by midnight, Grandmother,” Michael says, in falsetto, but Lucifer ignores him in favor of staring at a cluster of people a few feet away. 

Something in Sam’s chest gives way, and he starts to say he’s changed his mind, he doesn’t want to go, but Balthazar’s already got his arm around his shoulders and they’re walking towards the door, and the music is loud, and Sam is a little bit drunk and a little bit tired of always doing the right thing, and anyway he spends all his time with Lucifer, these days. 

The three of them go outside and meet up with Crowley’s friend Alastair, and the whole ride to his apartment, with Balthazar’s joint passed between the four of them in the close confines of Alastair’s Jeep, Sam tells himself, _it’s a break. That’s all. It’s just a break._

*

The cocaine makes Sam think too much too fast about everything and nothing all at the same time and when he runs his tongue over his gums they’re numb in fact the whole inside of his mouth is numb and that’s funny and he’s laughing like a maniac and someone’s got weed and someone else brought pills of all different colors _rainbow pills Sam lookit the rainbow pills_ Michael’s saying and that’s fucking _hilarious_ and Sam’s laughing he’s snorting more cocaine up through a rolled one hundred dollar bill and then there’s whiskey being passed around in shot glasses and Sam upends his on the coffee table but no matter Balthazar hands him another one and he throws it back just clean and fast like Dean usually does at the Roadhouse and oh the pills are starting to take effect—

*

When Sam wakes up in the morning, he’s lying on an unfamiliar, rough carpet, face down and soaked in sweat, his shirt bunched up against his stomach, jeans undone. There’s a faint pulsing behind his eyes, like the remnants of a headache, or perhaps one that hasn’t happened yet, and he hears himself groaning without really being aware of doing so. 

His phone is vibrating in his back pocket. 

He fumbles at it for a few seconds before managing to get it out, and then he has to squint for a long time at the screen before he can read the name there: _Luce,_ and it suddenly hits him that oh shit, he’s not at home. 

He presses ‘accept call’ and mumbles a hoarse greeting into the receiver.

“Sam.” Lucifer’s voice is quiet, the way it always is when he’s angry, and Sam feels a chill slide down his spine. “Where are you? Are you still at Alastair’s?”

( _Alastair. Right. The freak with the lisp and the jaw that never seemed to know where it was supposed to stay on his face._ )

“Yeah.” Sam presses his fingertips against the space between his eyes, gritting his teeth. “I um. I passed out last night. I think.” He swallows against a sudden wave of nausea and tastes the sour flavor of old alcohol at the back of his throat. 

“After you and my brothers left, I asked Crowley where Alastair’s apartment was,” Lucifer says, sounding more and more like he’s about five seconds away from an explosion. “I did not want to intrude on your—festivities last night, but I thought it would be good to know where you were.” He pauses, and Sam can picture him standing in their kitchen, or maybe in their room, running his fingers through his hair. “Just in case.”

“Oh.”

“Clearly, however, you have survived the night, and I am grateful for that.” Lucifer stops for a second, like he’s realizing how close to caring he’s getting, and clears his throat. When he speaks again, his speech is carefully controlled, and only because he knows him so well can Sam hear the minute tremors in his voice.

“Just ask someone for a ride back whenever you feel like it. It’s not a far drive.”

Sam’s feeling more awake now, his head swimming, and he can hear movement in the back of the apartment. Forcing himself into a sitting position, he tilts his head against his knee and breathes in shakily. “Can you come get me, maybe?”

Lucifer’s quiet for a minute, and Sam’s afraid he’ll say ‘no’, but then he sighs, the familiar sigh of the defeated man, and he says:

“Give me twenty minutes, okay?”

“Thanks,” Sam starts, but Lucifer’s already hung up. After a brief struggle with himself, Sam manages to stand, tugging on his shirt and walking down the hallway to the bathroom. 

As he’s coming out, he sees Alastair leaning against a wall, half an apple in his hand. He smirks when he sees Sam, and Sam remembers

( _the pills and the sickeningly sweet smell of weed and Alastair encouraging him: “just one more line of blow, Samuel, it’ll be okay”_ )

bits and pieces of last night, and he shivers.

“Good morning, Sam,” Alastair says, in that horrible, high voice he has. “Sleep well?”

“Where’s Mich—the guys I came here with?”

Alastair’s smirk widens. “Crowley brought them home last night after you’d passed out. I have to ask, though, Sam—are you _positive_ those boys are brothers?”

“Um.”

“Because, hmm—could’ve fooled me.” Alastair takes another bite of apple and wanders off, laughing to himself like he’s just made the most hysterical fucking joke in the entire world.

Sam really, _really_ doesn’t want to know what could’ve provoked that comment.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s sitting on the front steps of Alastair’s apartment, head still throbbing, when Lucifer pulls up. Sam cannot get into the car fast enough, and they drive off, Metallica’s _Black Album_ playing on the stereo. 

Lucifer is quiet for most of the ride, his jaw clenched, hands tense and white-knuckled on the steering wheel. It’s not until they are nearly at their apartment that he finally turns and glares at Sam, his expression hard, eyes tight. 

“I never wanted us to go down the same road as so many other bands,” he says. “I saw Alice in Chains live once, back when Layne was still their singer, and I saw what heroin did to him. What it did to his relationships with the other guys. I—” and here he sucks in a breath, turning the car into the parking lot behind the complex and shutting off the motor. “Balthazar and Michael have both had experience in the past with hard drugs. They promised me they were finished once No Salvation got together.” He pinches the space between his eyes. “Don’t use again, Sam. Don’t.”

Sam swallows. His mouth is still a little numb from the overload of cocaine, and he has a vague, burning pain at the small of his back, like someone might have dragged him across a rug while he was passed out.

“Okay,” he says, and when he leans in for a kiss, Lucifer intercepts him halfway, hand on his jaw, relief evident in his eyes.

*

_“I called the funeral home,” Michael says._

_Sam rubs a bandanna over his sweat-covered forehead and leans against the hood of the Cadillac he’s working on, bare chest muscles flexing as he breathes. For the past few days, he’s been coming to his brother’s junkyard for hours at a time and repairing old engines, mending cracked windshields, retreading tires. It’s not something he’s ever really done before, but growing up listening to first John and then Dean constantly going on about the Impala, he knows enough about cars to do it essentially from memory._

_Plus, it takes his mind off Lucifer, and the aching void left inside him now that he’s gone._

_“Took you long enough,” he mumbles into the phone._

_“At least I’m doing anything,” Michael snaps. “What the hell have you contributed to all this shit? You’re just hanging around Palo Alto, fucking eating fast food and waiting for that call from Stanford—”_

_As if Sam could really be thinking about college right now. “It’s not exactly my fault he’s dead.”_

_“So what are you implying, then? That I’m the one who drove him to this? Because frankly, Samuel, I don’t like that idea very much. Especially considering the fact that I’m the only one of our family who is paying for the ceremony, hiring the caterer, ordering the coffin, listening to the rest of you bitch and moan about how slow I’m going and then not doing a goddamn thing to help—”_

_Furious, Sam interrupts, “You don’t get to talk about who’s doing what for him now, Michael. You fucking_ asshole. _You lost that right years ago, when you decided that being a decent older brother was outside the realms of possibility. I was the only one who gave a shit about Lucifer. I have the right to grieve. I’m the one who has to wake up alone every fucking morning; all you have to do is make a few funeral preparations and then I’m pretty sure you’ll be finished with your family forever and damn glad to have them out of your hair—”_

_“Why don’t we talk about who got him into drugs in the first place and then we’ll see who has the right to mourn for him at all?”_

_It’s exactly the wrong thing to say. Suddenly Sam’s shaking so badly he almost can’t stand upright. He stares at his phone for a few seconds, then throws it as hard and as far as he can, watching it break through the already rusted-through hood of an ancient Ford F-150 about ten feet away. Grabbing the wrench he was using to tighten the bolts on the Cadillac’s wheels, he leans back and smashes it through the windshield instead, watching shards of glass fly and hardly feeling it when one cuts through the skin of his arm._

_He has never hated anyone so much as he hates himself._

*

Sam fails his exams. 

He should’ve been prepared for it, the way his study habits have been going, but it still shakes him up pretty badly to get his report card and know he won’t be going back to Stanford in the fall. Dean calls, asking how it went, and he bitches to him for a while about how upset he is, _what am I going to do now with myself,_ but he’s mostly just going through the motions of being disappointed. A sort of numbness has fallen over his brain, and after a while Sam says he has to go and then hangs up without waiting for a response from his brother.

He and Lucifer go to the bar that night and get completely wasted, their fingers trailing along the rims of their glasses as they down shot after shot. Then they head home and Lucifer barely waits for Sam to shrug out of his jacket before he’s pushing him back on their bed, crawling between his legs and licking a trail up the pale line of his neck, biting his jaw. Sam wraps his arms around Lucifer’s waist, pulling him closer, kissing him hot and wet and open-mouthed, and he’s shaking. They both are, and Sam almost rips Lucifer’s jeans trying to get them off. 

After, lying side by side, both covered in a fine sheen of sweat, Lucifer rolls over and tucks his head into the crook where Sam’s neck meets his shoulder, and he whispers, “You’ll find something else, love. You will. You were meant for the best.”

Sam runs a trembling hand down Lucifer’s arm and wishes he could believe him.

*

And so it goes. 

At first, dealing with the lack of college is difficult—Sam’s brain is essentially hardwired to get up at seven a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and he has a vision of a long line of weeks where he’ll be sitting alone in the kitchen for _hours_ with a cup of coffee and bleary vision while he waits for Lucifer to wake up; and he’s _bored,_ with No Salvation performing only on weekends and nothing to do in between—but he adapts. Dean asks him to come back to their old apartment from time to time, and occasionally he goes down to the library where Castiel works and tutors high school students struggling in English or Calculus, and he sets up appointments for Lucifer to go do his vocals at Crowley’s recording studio. 

He’s got all the knowledge of how to _do_ lawyer without actually being _allowed,_ and it’s driving him insane. 

One evening, he and Lucifer are in their apartment, and Lucifer’s writing a guitar solo while Sam sips from a nearly empty can of beer and stares at a stain on the carpet which he cannot remember the source of, when there’s a knock at the door. 

“Get it,” Lucifer mutters, and Sam nearly falls over himself in his haste to oblige. Michael is standing there, a tiny smirk on his face, and Sam hesitates before opening the door and letting him in. 

“Michael,” Lucifer says coolly, without looking up. “What the hell do you want?”

“Besides gifting you with better manners, little brother?” Michael walks over to their television set, which is playing _The Walking Dead_ on low, and runs his fingers over the dusty top. “I’d like to invite the two of you out.”

“Out?” Lucifer repeats, still speaking to his sheet music, shoulders going tense. 

“Out,” Michael says. “Like ‘to a party’ out.”

“Oh, I think we’ll pass. I’m not a huge fan of your parties.” 

“Sam is though, aren’t you, Sam?” Michael turns to Sam and smiles, showing his teeth. 

Sam tugs on his hair and sniffs, remembering how it felt to wake up sticky and alone on Alastair’s carpet, with no memory of the previous night and no way of knowing how he was going to get home. “Not really,” he mutters. 

“He doesn’t have you just _leashed,_ does he,” Michael says after a long minute, eyes narrowing as he looks from Sam to Lucifer and back. “He has you fucking _roped,_ tied to a pole in the backyard, waiting for him to call his commands so when he says ‘come’ you say ‘how fast’—”

Lucifer looks up at that, sharp and quick. “I believe Sam and I said _no,_ Michael. And I believe Sam’s making his own choices here, so why don’t you do us all a favor and fuck off—”

“Was I talking to you, Lucifer?” Michael interrupts. He walks over to his younger brother and stands so that one of his legs is brushing against Lucifer’s side, his chin about a foot away from Lucifer’s shoulder. “Was I addressing you just now? No? Then don’t _cut me off_.”

Lucifer mutters something under his breath, pushing his sheet music away from him, visibly shaking now that Michael is so close to him. Sam doesn’t catch all of it, but he thinks he hears Balthazar’s name, and maybe the word ‘incestuous’, and _okay,_ that’s _it._ He walks over and grabs Michael’s shoulder, forcing him to turn and face him, and he spits out:

“If we go to your party, will you leave us the hell alone?”

He thinks Michael’s going to hit him, but he’s just tilting his head, his lips twisting into something like a sneer. “I might,” he says. 

Sam glances at Lucifer. “Luce?” he prompts quietly. 

Lucifer stares down at the table for a few more seconds, his fists clenching and unclenching. Then:

“Dammit,” and he stands up too, blue eyes flashing dangerously in the overhead light. 

Michael’s sneer widens. “Oh, Alastair is going to be so _pleased_ to have you two at his apartment,” he says, and it’s all Sam can do not to haul off and hit him until he’s unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

*

Alastair recognizes Sam almost immediately and walks up to him and Lucifer with his jaw working furiously. “Sam Winchester,” he drawls. “It’s so, hmm, good to see you again.” 

“Alastair,” Sam says, choosing not to respond to this obviously false statement. “This is Lucifer, my boyfriend.”

“Oh, you’re the little Morgenstern boy that wouldn’t come last time.” 

Lucifer’s eyes narrow. “Morningstar,” he mutters. “Not Morgenstern.”

“My apologies.” Alastair claps his hands together and mock bows in their direction, then gestures behind himself to a coffee table laden over with alcohol, ashtrays, and drugs of various types, all illegal, all colors. “Help yourselves,” he says, before walking away. 

Sam looks at Lucifer, who shakes his head. “I’m not,” he says. “I won’t, Sam. I told you.”

Then he looks up, and his eyes narrow. Sam has to glance around a few times to figure out exactly where his gaze is going, but when he does, he feels his heart bottom out. ( _Fuck—_ )

Michael and Balthazar are standing across the room with Crowley. Their backs are facing Sam and Lucifer, but from the way Michael is slouched over, his right arm trembling, it’s obvious that he’s already drunk. Probably high, too, from the way he’s laughing. Balthazar has his arm around Michael’s shoulders, holding him steady even though he’s tipping back a half-empty bottle of beer, and there’s something oddly intimate about the way his fingers curve against Michael’s arm. 

“None of the hard stuff,” Lucifer says, his voice tight and thick, and Sam nods. 

“Okay,” he says, softly. They kneel together in front of the table, where a joint is being passed around, and Sam takes it, breathing in and handing it to Lucifer.

He leans over and lightly nuzzles at his neck, inhaling the familiar combination of aftershave and winter and some unnamable scent that is uniquely Lucifer. “I love you,” Sam murmurs, so no one else can hear. Lucifer relaxes almost instantly into his touch, breathing in the marijuana and handing it to the next person, but it’s not until the weed has been passed around three or four times that he finally stops staring at his brothers and their manager.

*

_The funeral date is set. Sam calls Balthazar to tell him and is surprised when a woman answers the phone, someone chipper and young who introduces herself as ‘Anna’ and seems blissfully unaware of Sam’s relationship with her partner—or whatever he is to her. She calls him to the phone, and he comes a few seconds later, swallowing something before saying:_

_“Don’t make any domesticity jokes, Sam, or I swear I will impale you with a stake.”_

_“I wasn’t even going to,” Sam says, biting back a laugh as he runs his fingers down the lengths of some ties, red and blue and green, in the men’s department of Dillard’s. He hates shopping here, but it’s the only place he can think of to buy a decent suit. “Anyway, I was calling to let you know that Michael’s done the funeral shit. He set a date and everything.”_

_“When is it?”_

_“This Saturday.”_

_“Shit,” Balthazar swears into the phone._

_“It’s just a five hour plane flight from Manhattan to Palo Alto,” Sam reminds him. “Less, if you take a private jet.”_

_“Very funny, Sam.” Balthazar pauses, and Sam can picture him leaning against some pristine kitchen counter in New York, chewing on his lower lip. “It’s just. Saturday is rather soon, isn’t it?”_

_And then Sam hears it, the underlying desperation in his voice, and he remembers why Balthazar had to move in the first place, why everything fell to shit that first night at Alastair’s, and he swallows, his hand stilling on a charcoal gray Armani suit. “You’ll be there, right? You said you were going to come.”_

_Balthazar breathes out into the phone, a rush of air. “Yes,” he says, “of course. Anna and I will both be at the church with smiles on and roses in our arms.”_

_“Great,” Sam says. He hesitates, then starts to add, “I’m sure Michael won’t—”_

_“Sam,” Balthazar interrupts. “I have to go. Dinner’s getting cold.” He hangs up before Sam can say anything else, leaving him alone in Dillard’s with a sick sense of dread slowly building in his stomach._

_“Sir?” The salesclerk is behind him now, fake smile plastered on her lips. “Can I help you with anything?”_

_“Uh, no. Thank you.” Sam backs out of the store as fast as he can, sweat pouring down the nape of his neck, and almost runs an old woman down in his haste to get to his car and go home._

_He’s got five days. He can try Lord and Taylor’s tomorrow._

*

There is blood trickling from one of Lucifer’s nostrils and a burning pain in the back of Sam’s head and they have five minutes to clean up and get Lucifer strapped with his guitar and onstage.

Sam knocks one of his knees against the toilet bowl as he tries to stand up, his hands shaking so hard he almost pushes the last remains of cocaine into the water. He and Lucifer are using now—they’re using _together,_ which apparently in Lucifer’s mind makes it okay, as opposed to using alone—and while Sam spends the majority of his time telling himself he’s _not_ addicted, he’s really having a hard time convincing himself of this right now, with his eyes spinning and his brain going on overload. There is an awful buzzing sound in his ears, like bees, and he thinks if he wasn’t so fucking strung out he’d probably murder Alastair on the spot for giving them a shit batch.

“Get up, get up,” Lucifer slurs, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand and smearing blood across his skin. “We have to _go_ —” and he grabs at the toilet paper dispenser, trying to use it as leverage, and ends up dragging it off the wall and onto his foot. “Fuck,” he mutters, staring down at his shoe and biting his lower lip. It looks oddly endearing from the angle Sam is at, and he leans across the toilet, grabbing Lucifer’s jaw and turning his head.

“What,” Lucifer starts, but stops as Sam leans in and licks the blood off his upper lip. The cocaine is heightening all of his senses, and the taste, the scent of iron, is too much. He practically crashes into Lucifer, pushing him against the stall door in an effort to get as much of their mouths pressed together as he can, and Lucifer grapples at his belt loops, tugging for balance, then bringing his hands up and tangling them in Sam’s hair. It would hurt if Sam wasn’t so completely out of it, but as it is he just laughs into the kiss, trying to stand up without actually separating his lips from his lover’s.

There is a knock on the bathroom door, and Balthazar calls, “You two can fuck later, but we have to go now, Luce.” 

Lucifer pulls away slowly from Sam, dragging his teeth along his lower lip. He’s still got a bit of blood just under his nostril, but in the low light of the Roadhouse Sam’s pretty sure no one will notice. “Finish with you later,” Lucifer murmurs, his voice a low erotic drawl that shoots straight to Sam’s groin, and they flush the toilet a few times to get rid of the cocaine and then leave the bathroom together.

Under the spotlights, Lucifer looks beautiful as always, shining brighter than any of his brothers as he sings into the microphone, gripping it with shaking hands and running full speed from one end of the stage to the other. He grabs Michael by the shoulders a few times, leaning against him as he howls about broken glass and razors, and Dean, who is sitting with Castiel, leans over to Sam and yells:

“He’s fucking hyper tonight. What’d you do, blow him in the shower?” 

Sam has a brief moment of paranoia— _Dean knows about the drugs oh fuck we’re going to jail oh man maybe I’d better stop the concert right now before things go any further_ —but then reasons with himself that Dean’s his _brother,_ he wouldn’t tell. So he just smiles, all teeth, barely in control, and he nods. 

An hour later, he watches Lucifer sitting down in the center of the stage to sing their final three songs and thinks how, a month ago, he wasn’t doing anything outside of drinking; how a month ago, he almost killed Sam for going to Alastair’s. 

He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and tells himself that people change, but Lucifer’s got it, he’s going to be fine, they all are. 

*

“What the fuck do you mean, you _might have shot up_ at Alastair’s? What the hell does that mean, Sam?”

“Shooting up is when—”

“No, you fuck, I know what it _means._ I just want to know what you mean when you say you ‘might have’ done it.”

“I mean I don’t fucking remember, okay, Luce? All I know is I went there with Michael and when I woke up in the morning everyone else was still passed out around me and I had a giant bruise on my leg, but it could’ve been from someone throwing something at me, I don’t _know_.”

“Were you nauseous?”

“A little.”

“Then you probably shot up. Christ.”

“Well, I didn’t overdose, so I don’t see what the big deal is—”

“You’re getting too _into_ this, Sam, _that’s_ the fucking problem.”

“Yeah, like you aren’t fucking snorting up every goddamn line of cocaine you see.”

“ _Cocaine,_ Sam. There is a _huge_ difference between that and heroin. Trust me. You don’t want to get involved with heroin, man.”

“Speaking from personal experience?”

“Screw you.”

“And you’re being incredibly hypocritical, Lucifer. Standing there telling me to lay off the opiates like it actually means anything to you—”

“How the fuck does that make me a _hypocrite,_ exactly—”

“Just a few months ago you were all, ‘never do drugs, Sam’, and now you’re getting absolutely _plastered_ with the rest of us at Alastair’s, never showing up to rehearsals on time, never going to appointments with Crowley because you’re too busy sleeping it off—”

“Well, I’m not addicted.”

“Right.”

“I’m not. I’m using for recreation. It’s just until we get the record finished and put on the shelves, and then this is over with. Done.”

“That’s probably the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, Luce—”

“How fucking _dare_ you!”

“You’re just as addicted as the rest of us, you know that.”

“I’m not using fucking _heroin,_ though. I would never go down that path.”

“So you said about every drug.”

“Fuck you, Sam Winchester.”

“At least I have the balls to admit I’m addicted!” 

Sam ends up with a bruise on his left cheekbone, and Lucifer has a split lip and a black eye. They don’t speak for three days, sulking around the apartment and refusing to look at each other even during concerts at the Roadhouse. Sam caves first, as they’d both known he would, coming into he and Lucifer’s room one night and curling up behind him, stroking his hair, kissing the soft skin at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into his hair, clutching at his shirt even tighter when Lucifer rolls over in his arms, exhaling shakily against his collarbone. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Lucifer says, kissing the salty tears off Sam’s cheeks.

*

There are still good days. 

Some mornings Sam wakes up curled around Lucifer, and he kisses his bare shoulders until he opens his eyes, rolling onto his back and looking at Sam with a tiny smile on his lips. “Hey,” he says, voice hoarse with sleep, and then Sam kisses him some more, and they end up having morning sex, which is lazy and slow and half-awake and absolutely _wonderful._

And then they get up and get dressed, and Lucifer runs out and gets coffee while Sam turns on the television, and they sit on the couch together, eating breakfast in their sweats and watching reruns of bad eighties shows while the sunlight slowly climbs through their window.

And Sam drags his X-Box out of the hall closet and they play a few games, legs tangled on the sofa cushions as they punch viciously at the controller buttons, trying to beat each other ( _it’s always “loser bottoms” and Sam absolutely_ loves _winning and getting the reward of seeing Lucifer underneath him, fucked-out and cross-eyed from his orgasm_ ). 

Sometimes, if the weather is fine, they take a pair of bicycles that used to belong to Gabriel and ride along the stretch of highway that overlooks the Pacific, letting the breeze hit their bare calves and arms. Sam inhales salty sea air, feeling it go through every cell in his body, and he vows he’s going to get clean, he’s going to start eating salads again and help Lucifer get back into regular rehearsals and maybe even apply for college in the fall. If not Stanford, then anywhere. Anywhere. 

He likes to look at Lucifer in the sunlight, neck stretched out like a cat, tiny droplets of sweat trickling down into the hollow of his throat. His shirt plasters to his skin, and Sam’s eyes run appreciatively over his body, every dip and curve, the flat plane of his chest, the well-developed muscles of his stomach. _Mine,_ he thinks, smiling, and knows that when Lucifer looks at him, that’s all he sees, too.

And then in the evenings, they order pizza and crack open a couple of beers from the refrigerator and read _The Great Gatsby_ (Sam’s choice) or something by Stephen King (Lucifer’s choice) out loud, because they can be domestic when they want. And later, Sam always finds himself stretched out beneath Lucifer, his hands gripping blindly at the headboard while Lucifer slams into him, groaning and gasping his name, shuddering as he comes. Sam bites Lucifer’s shoulder to muffle his cries, choking on a string of words that would have come out incoherent anyway, and then, his hand resting in Lucifer’s hair, lips pressed against his forehead, he thinks, _I am happy. I am truly the happiest man alive._

Days like that, he believes it. 

*

“Come on, boys, let’s roll, you can’t spend all your pathetic lives in a closet,” Crowley calls through the door.

Lucifer has his mouth wrapped around a foil-covered cigarette and is inhaling almost all of the heroin laid before him, so Sam answers:

“Yeah, no, we’ll be right there, man.”

Then he grabs his cigarette up from the edge of the table and lightly nudges Lucifer over a few centimeters so he can get his fair share of the drug. As far as Lucifer is concerned, it’s all still very much ‘recreational’, and he swears up and down that the second No Salvation actually has an album out he’s going to go clean, but Sam doesn’t see it happening.

Frankly, at this point, he’s past caring. 

There’s a second knock, a few minutes later, this one from Balthazar, who calls, “You guys aren’t screwing again, are you? Because I’m not really up for listening to all that—”

“We’re fine,” Lucifer says lazily, stretching out with his head on Sam’s chest, eyelids fluttering in a state between open and shut. “We’re gonna be right there, just chill.” He runs a finger down Sam’s throat, and Sam tilts his head back, resting it against the wall, allowing Lucifer better access. 

“Five minutes,” someone says over an intercom, and Lucifer makes a sound, his lips pressed against Sam’s skin. 

“‘S okay,” Sam mutters. He’s drifting off to sleep, his fingers resting against the space between Lucifer’s navel and his groin, and he’s warm, warm as _hell,_ and he really, _really_ does not care about anything right now, so long as he doesn’t have to move. “You… you go, I’ll wait here.”

“Hmm,” Lucifer says, without moving. Sam is vaguely aware of Lucifer’s head drifting into the space between his neck and his shoulder, and then he slides into some golden state of oblivion, drifting through the stately pleasure domes of Xanadu, as scripted by Samuel Coleridge. He’s blissfully unaware of anything for about an hour, and then, suddenly, he’s being hauled to his feet and slapped across the face by a hand connected to a vaguely familiar voice, while beside him Lucifer is having the same treatment done by a man Sam thinks might be Michael. Or maybe Gabriel, it’s hard to tell through the haze.

“Sam,” the voice hitting him is yelling, and he recognizes his brother. “Sam! Jesus fucking _Christ_ —” Dean slaps him again, harder this time, and he lets out a grunt, stepping back a pace, reaching up and rubbing at his cheek.

“Fuck, Dean,” he says, slowly, because his reflexes _suck_ right now. “What the hell is your problem?”

“ _My_ problem?” Dean almost snarls, grabbing him by his shirt lapels and dragging him out of the closet and into the hallway leading backstage. “Why don’t we discuss what _your_ problem is, man? You’re fucking—chasing the goddamn dragon in some storage room while your boyfriend’s band has to stumble their way through every goddamn song _without a fucking singer!_ And you don’t see a _problem_ with this?”

Sam subconsciously reaches up and tugs on his hair. “This is the first time,” he mumbles to his shoes, because it _is,_ it’s the first time he and Lucifer have ever decided it wasn’t worth it to wait ninety minutes before they could get their fix, the first time they’ve had Alastair do a delivery straight to the Roadhouse, rather than going to his apartment. 

“Oh, no, don’t you fucking lie to me,” Dean says, laughing in that way he does when he’s trying not to hit someone—in this case, his brother. “Don’t you tell me this is the first time you’ve tasted that drug, man. I know you’ve been strung out for _months_ now. I’ve seen you, the way you’ve stopped coming around the apartment, the way you just stay at your house all the time—” 

“I didn’t say it was the first time I did the drug, Dean,” Sam interrupts, exasperated. He wants to explain himself more, but Dean doesn’t really seem interested, and Sam is tired, and he just kind of wants to curl up on the floor and go back to sleep. 

Castiel comes up, then, and puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Dean,” he says, in that scary low voice. “We should go, now that you have assured yourself your brother isn’t dead.”

Dean doesn’t move. His eyes are locked onto Sam’s, and he looks ready for murder. “Is this how it is for you now, Sam? Just letting narcotics run your whole life because you failed a fucking law exam?”

If Sam felt any stronger, he’d punch him. As it is, he just glares death right back at his brother, and after a few seconds, Dean stiffens. He squares his shoulders, jaw going tense, and his eyes tighten at the corners. “Fine,” he says, “it’s not my fucking problem, anyway.” He jerks out of Castiel’s grasp and storms down the hallway without looking back. 

Castiel shoots a level look at Sam and Lucifer, one that Sam’s pretty sure could burn down entire cities, and then he follows Dean out. 

Once they’re gone, Michael—it _is_ Michael, after all—walks forward, glaring at his brother and Sam. Lucifer tilts his head, fingers flexing against the wall, and he asks:

“You gonna throw the Spanish Inquisition at us too, Michael?”

“No.” Michael’s eyes flick between them, hard as flint, and for the first time since Sam’s known him there’s not even a hint of a smirk on his lips. “I’m just wondering, Luce—are you in or out?”

“Of what.”

“The band, you fucking idiot,” Balthazar says, coming up behind them all with his Telecaster still wrapped around his shoulders. “Do you want to sing for No Salvation anymore or no? Because you aren’t acting like it. Haven’t been for a while now.”

“Are you trying,” Sam starts, then clears his throat, trying to get rid of the slur in his speech. “Are _you_ fucking lecturing _us_ on drug use? Because what I remember is that it was you and Michael who introduced us to Alastair in the first place—”

“We don’t use fucking _heroin_ ,” Balthazar snaps. “Definitely not before a concert. For fuck’s sake, Lucifer, you made sure that was part of our ‘terms and conditions’ first day we formed the band—”

“It’s over,” Lucifer interrupts, quietly.

Balthazar blinks.

“What?” Michael says, and it’s like all the air just got sucked out of the room, the way he narrows his eyes and tilts his head and moves so that he’s maybe an inch away from Lucifer. “I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong—” 

Lucifer snorts. “You really didn’t,” he says. “You and me and Balthazar and Gabriel—hardly a functional band, wouldn’t you say? I’m willing to bet we wouldn’t have lasted to the second album anyway. So I’m going to call it quits while we’re ahead. Gives you a chance to move on to, ah— _better_ things, and I’ll just stay here in Palo Alto with Sam and do what I like.”

“And what you like is drugs.”

“What I like is drugs.” Lucifer _almost_ doesn’t hesitate before he says this, and Sam cuts his eyes to him, but he’s standing stiff and tall and his entire body is shaking, he’s so tense. There’s a second’s silence, then Michael backs away, folding his arms across his chest. It’s incredibly close in the little hallway, with the four of them standing cramped together, and there are beads of sweat forming under Sam’s collar and trickling down the back of his neck, but the room temperature seems to have dropped by at least ten degrees. Maybe even twenty. 

“Well,” Michael says coolly. “I suppose I know where we stand, then.” He looks at Balthazar, and something minute and subtle changes in his expression. “And what about you, little brother number one? Are you going to try and tough it out with me and Gabe in a band, maybe change the name and hire a vocal coach—” 

“Oh, I’m sure I’d love to,” Balthazar says smoothly, “but I don’t think even a vocal coach could help train you to sing properly.”

“Asshole,” Michael mutters, something almost like affection playing at the back of his voice.

“Shut up, you bastard,” Balthazar says, nudging Michael’s shoulder with his elbow. Then his expression changes too, hardening at the corners, and Sam is now awake enough to recognize that maybe he and Lucifer should leave, but he can’t make himself move. “But actually, Michael. I—I feel perhaps it’d be best, if it wasn’t the four of us, that the band just shouldn’t be. At all.”

The temperature drops again. 

“Really?” Michael murmurs, his voice sliding on the border between curious and evil. “Is that so? Why?”

“Besides the fact that none of us can sing worth shit?” Balthazar hesitates, and Sam thinks he’s going to say nothing, and that’s going to be the end of it, but then he mutters, “I can’t actually be in a band with just you, Michael,” and that’s it, that’s all she wrote. 

There’s a long, long silence, and none of them move, though Lucifer’s eyes are now flicking between his brothers like he’s watching a mildly interesting tennis match. 

Then Michael’s mouth tightens, and he snarls, “Fucking _Christ_ ,” and he leaves, shoving past Balthazar as he goes and slamming the door separating backstage from the bar as he goes. 

A few seconds later, Gabriel pokes his head around the corner and asks, “What in the hell is going on, exactly?” and Balthazar says something about _your bitch of a brother_ and storms out as well, his foot making contact with an amplifier before he’s gone. 

“Whoa,” Gabriel blinks. His eyes go from Lucifer to Sam and back, and he hesitates before reaching into his jacket and pulling out two half-wrapped silver packages.

“Chocolate, anyone?”

*

_The morning of the funeral, Sam spends twenty minutes trying to straighten his tie in front of the bathroom mirror before he remembers that it really doesn’t matter how he looks, no one that matters is going to see him anyway. Which makes him remember whose funeral this is, which reminds him of whose fault it is that Lucifer’s dead, which starts a fresh onslaught of tears, leaving him clutching the edge of the sink, his knuckles going white as he shakes, hair hanging into his face._

_He’s really not okay._

_Gabriel is supposed to go pick up Balthazar and Anna from the airport, and Sam knows he’s reliable—most of the time—but that doesn’t stop him from calling the youngest Morgenstern five times before leaving he and Lucifer’s apartment (he honestly cannot stop thinking of it as being theirs, and doesn’t really intend to, either). He stops by the flower shop on the way, so he can pick up a bouquet of roses he ordered last week, and by the time he gets to the funeral home he’s a nervous wreck, tugging on his hair and adjusting his collar until it’s gone soft with his sweat._

_Michael’s already there when he goes in, yelling at the mortician about something, and it takes Sam a full minute to actually get his attention. He turns slowly, dressed in a dark suit and navy tie, and plasters something like a smile on his face._

_“Sam,” he says. “One minute, okay?”_

_“I just wanted to know if Gabe’s come with Balthazar and—um. And himself. Y’know.” It’s a clumsy cover-up, but Sam has no idea if Michael knows about Anna, and he doesn’t want to be the one to get in the middle of what’s sure to be a shit fest between them._

_Michael shakes his head, his smile tightening into something vaguely terrifying. “Go sit in the room—” he gestures at the door leading into the funeral parlor. “I’m kind of in the middle of something.”_

_“Sure.” Sam nods at the mortician, privately feeling sorry for the poor man, who looks like he’d rather be in the coffin himself than out here with this maniac, then scrawls his signature on the guest book, near the top, and goes in._

_As requested, the coffin is closed, but Sam can’t help feeling a chill as he sets the roses on top of it before sitting in the front pew and clasping his hands in front of him, staring down at the floor. ‘Hey, Luce,’ he thinks, swallowing. ‘I’m here now, the only sane one that’s gonna show up.’ He imagines Lucifer laughing at that, and knows that if he were here he’d call it an overshot attempt at affection, and he feels his chest tighten._

_A hand falls on his shoulder, and he looks up into the bright green gaze of his brother. “Sammy,” Dean says, voice heavy. “How’re you holding up?”_

_Sam glances over Dean’s shoulder for a second and sees Castiel standing near the back of the room, looking more somber than usual without the tan coat to smooth over the effect of his strikingly dark suit. “I’m okay,” Sam says, pressing his hand against his forehead. “It’s gonna be hell though, having to deal with Michael.”_

_“Ah, he’s always a little prick,” Dean mutters. “If he tries to start any shit, just punch him.”_

_Sam lets a tiny smile flick across his face before he remembers that he’s supposed to be upset._

_Dean hesitates, reaching up and running his fingers over the top of his hair. “Really, though,” he says. “Are you gonna be okay, man? Do you want—anything?”_

_“I’m okay, Dean,” Sam repeats, though he’s anything but. “Thanks.” He reaches up and touches Dean’s arm, the closest thing to affection he knows his brother is really comfortable with, and Dean nods once before turning and walking back to Castiel. They sit in the back, both unusually silent, and Sam turns to face the coffin again._

_A few minutes later, he’s joined by Gabriel, hair slicked back; and Balthazar, accompanied by a red-haired woman who Sam assumes is Anna. They sit beside him, and there’s a brief silence, heavy with the weight of memories that aren’t all pleasant, and then Sam says:_

_“It’s good… good to see you again, Balthazar.”_

_“Considering the circumstances,” Balthazar murmurs, and Sam wasn’t going to say that, he_ wasn’t. 

_“I’m sorry for your loss, Sam,” Anna says, touching Sam on his forearm. He tenses at the unfamiliar brush of fingers, but it’s only for a second, and then he’s smiling at her, a rise and fall of the corners of his lips._

_“Where’s Michael?” Sam asks, craning his neck to look._

_“Still screaming at the mortician about whatever the hell—probably the carpet’s two shades darker than he wanted,” Gabriel says, and they all laugh shortly at that._

_There’s a man in the back of the room that Sam doesn’t know, someone tall and bald, wearing dark glasses despite the dim lighting, stiff-shouldered and stern-faced. He’s looking in the direction of Balthazar, Gabriel, Anna, and Sam, and there’s something oddly familiar about the way his mouth is set, the way he stares at them behind his glasses with his head tilted slightly to the right—_

_“Hey, Balthazar,” Sam says, “is that your dad?”_

_Balthazar looks. “Well, shit,” he says, and doesn’t bother keeping his voice down. At that exact same moment, the doors burst open and Michael comes storming in, his expression murderous, head down. He walks straight to the front pew and sits beside Sam, barely acknowledging Balthazar or Gabriel with more than a side glance._

_“Adonai is here,” he snarls, and Sam has just enough time to form the strange name on his lips before Balthazar is acquiescing that they already know, and then Michael spins around, and his eyebrows go together, and he spits out, “I_ told _them not to let him in.”_

_“He’s your dad,” Sam says._

_Michael lets out a harsh laugh. “Like that really fucking matters. He’s an asshole. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t even know Lucifer’s dead.” He turns back around and frowns at his hands. “How’d he find out?”_

_“Probably looked in the obituaries like everyone else,” Balthazar murmurs, and then Michael looks at him, really_ looks, _and Sam feels a chill rush up his spine at the expression on both their faces, how well it’s mirrored._

_“Well, isn’t it nice to see you back in California,” Michael says. His gaze goes to Anna, and something serpentine crawls into his eyes. “Who are you?”_

_She introduces herself. Sam wants to tell her how sorry he is that she unwittingly gotten involved with this fucked-up crazy family._

_“Oh.” Michael’s eyes narrow. “So this is what you’ve been getting up to in Manhattan.” He stretches his fingers out over his knees, and Sam watches the minute tremors that run through his body. “And here I was thinking you’d actually started college and were trying to make something of yourself.”_

_“Go fuck yourself,” Balthazar mutters, almost too low for Michael to hear. He stands up, pushing his shoulder blades back so that they almost stand out against his suit, and Sam’s pretty sure that no one, not even Anna, could miss the hungry expression that crosses Michael’s face as he trails his eyes down Balthazar’s spine._

_Then the second oldest Morgenstern, with his educated accent and dirty blond curls and slate gray eyes, shaped so like Lucifer’s, turns and walks down the aisle and out of the parlor._

_Michael makes a face. “What a drama queen,” he mutters._

_“You’re such an asshole,” Sam snaps suddenly, and he says it loud enough so that everyone in the whole room goes quiet. “Why the fuck did you do that? You haven’t seen him in five months, and it’s—Lucifer’s—” He gestures angrily at the coffin, and Michael’s mouth flattens into a thin line. “You can’t even be decent to your own brother for thirty minutes?”_

_“You know what the problem is, Sam. Don’t act like you don’t remember.”_

_“Oh, I remember well enough.” Sam frowns, then moves over a little, lowering his voice so Anna won’t hear. “You had it pretty good, Michael. You had a nice life, and then Luce and I made a few mistakes and it all got shot to hell, and now he’s back, and you’re not—” He breathes in, shutting his eyes. “If I had the chance to be with someone who loved me like that, if I could resurrect Lucifer and help him to make the right choices, do you know how fast I would do it? You have no fucking idea how lucky you were. Are. Could be.”_

_“Yes, well, I’m not you, am I?” Michael’s eyes narrow, and for a second he’s looking at Anna, young and lovely in her shining black dress as she stares reverently ahead, lips moving in silent prayer. “I’m twenty weeks too late, and it doesn’t fucking matter anyway, because I’m fine here, and he’s obviously fine there, and there’s nothing more to do.” He lets his gaze linger on Sam for a moment longer, then turns back to face the front._

_Sam reads his message well enough—‘I don’t want to talk about it and don’t push me’—and he hesitates before moving back to his original position and flexing his fingers on his thigh._

_A few minutes later, Balthazar comes back, not looking at anyone as he sits between Sam and Anna, and a few minutes after that, the funeral begins._

*

It’s dark by the time Sam leaves Alastair’s apartment, dark and cold for November in California. The sky looks threatening, thunder rumbling low in the distance, but Sam is just drunk enough not to care as he climbs into the driver’s seat of his car and cranks the ignition. It’s a fifteen minute drive from here to he and Lucifer’s place if he speeds, and he’s planning on doing just that—mostly because there’s black tar heroin in the glove compartment, and a two ounce bindle of cocaine in the passenger’s seat, and he’s pretty sure if he doesn’t get them to Lucifer as fast as he can, he’s going to get screamed at for at least half an hour. 

(Luce is a nice enough guy most of the time, but he can get fucking _vicious_ when his fix is involved.)

Sam pulls off the curb and heads down the narrow street that leads away from Alastair’s. It starts to rain as he passes underneath a low-hanging line of trees, planted on the side of the road in the early twentieth century, and Sam watches the water running down the windshield for a few seconds, transfixed, before remembering to turn on the wipers. 

Fifteen minute drive, and he finds himself yawning five minutes in. The drink he had is making him warm and sleepy, and the weed he smoked—would still be smoking if Alastair hadn’t snatched it out of his hand as he walked out the front door—was stronger than usual, giving everything surreal, crystalline details. 

In the back of Sam’s mind, he knows he probably shouldn’t use with Lucifer tonight, he needs to go job hunting in the morning, but, as always for about three months now, he feels too numb to care. There’s a lead weight in his veins, something sluggish and awful that’s settled permanently into his body. It repulses him, but he can’t stop using long enough to pinpoint the source of the problem. He’s pretty sure that _whatever-it-is_ is what’s made Dean stop talking to him, what made Crowley tell them all _I’m done with you lot, I’m going back to England_ after that huge fight back in August; why he and Lucifer are virtually the only people who will talk to each other now, aside from occasional calls from Michael which always end with Lucifer screaming his throat raw and punching another hole in the wall. 

In the rare times when he’s not completely strung out, Sam kind of hates what his life has become.

He’s nodding off, chin drifting on his chest, eyelids shutting in response to the chemicals rushing through his bloodstream. The rain is coming down harder, and he knows he needs to stay awake long enough to get home, but his head hurts and there’s only seven minutes left for him to get home— _if he hurries_ —and so he pushes his foot harder against the accelerator and tilts his head back against the seat and allows his eyes to close. 

Just for a second.

When he wakes up, there’s a truck horn blaring in his ears and bright headlights in his eyes, and he has approximately two-point-four seconds to jerk his wheel before he makes a head-on collision with the eighteen-wheeler bearing down on him in the other lane. His right tires skid in the gravel ditch on the side of the road, and he slams on the brakes, allowing the car to come to an uneven stop before almost jerking the keys out of the ignition and falling back against the seat, his heart slamming against his ribs. The rain’s coming down harder now, blurring his vision worse than it already is, and Sam’s fingers are shaking as he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his cell phone. He unlocks the screen and scrolls through his contacts until he comes to the only name he wants to see right now, and only hesitates for a second before tapping at it with his thumb.

The phone rings a few times, and then a familiar, lazy voice answers, “Hello?”

Sam bites down on his lower lip and doesn’t answer right away, and there’s a long silence before the voice asks, “Sam?”

“Dean,” Sam says, and suddenly he’s crying.

“Sam,” Dean says, the tone of his voice putting a temporary pause on how angry he is with his brother, how many weeks they’ve spent not talking. “You okay, man? What happened?”

“No.” Sam swallows, wiping at his eyes, and takes a deep breath. “I need. Um. I need you to come get me.” He glances at the cocaine in the seat next to him, at the latch of the glove compartment where the opiates are stored. “I’m—I need your help, dude. I’m in a lot of trouble—”

“Dean? What’s going on?” Castiel asks from somewhere off the phone.

“It’s Sammy,” Dean says, and Sam can hear him moving. “Don’t—just hang on, man. I’m coming. Tell me where you are.” 

He tells him, then hangs up and tosses the phone to the side, pressing his forehead against the cool glass of his window. He’s _exhausted,_ suddenly, all the fight-or-flight response adrenaline rushing out of him as his brain slowly registers that he’s not in danger of being run into anymore. He shuts his eyes halfway and breathes out a sigh, waiting for the familiar rumble of the Impala to come down the street. 

*

Sam spends a week and a half at Dean and Castiel’s apartment, detoxing cold turkey on their couch, his body soaked in sweat one second and shivering violently the next, head stuck halfway inside a trashcan because he can’t get up the strength to walk to the bathroom. It isn’t just the almost-wreck that’s made him want to sober up, it’s the loneliness, and the feeling like he’s being constantly drained, and the fact that his life is really going nowhere except down the needle of another syringe, and he can’t do it anymore. He just can’t.

He calls Lucifer the first night, tells him where he is and why he’s there, and Lucifer hangs up on him, angry and self-righteous— _“we weren’t doing anything wrong, Sam, just having fun, or were you lying when you said you enjoyed it?”._ On the fifth night, when Sam’s feeling well enough to open his mouth without throwing up, he calls Lucifer again, and this time he’s armed with what he wants to say:

“I’m not trying to make myself look better than you, Luce. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m not saying I won’t ever indulge in a little beer now and then, or a cigarette, but I’m done with drugs.”

“It’s fine, Sam,” Lucifer says, after a long silence. “Really. Your choice, and probably a good one.” He laughs a little, under his breath, and adds quietly, “At least you see a light at the end of the tunnel now.”

“I don’t,” Sam says. “I just think if I get clean I might start to,” but Lucifer hangs up on him again, and Sam spends the rest of the night staring at the television screen without seeing it, sweating in the cold air. 

Dean says he can stay as long as he needs to, but after ten days of having to put up with Castiel’s semi-terrible cooking and Dean’s mothering, he decides he’s had enough and goes back to he and Lucifer’s apartment. Lucifer is waiting up for him, wearing a pair of old sweats and nothing else, and when Sam walks in the door he gets up and crosses the room in five quick steps, wrapping his arms around him and pressing his face against his shoulder. He mutters something against Sam’s skin, the gist of which sounds like _sorry for being such an ass,_ and Sam—clean, sober for the first time in months, tired but pleased to see Lucifer still standing on both feet—kisses him and mutters that it’s okay, that he’s forgiven.

*

Two months pass, and things are okay. Lucifer doesn’t use in front of Sam anymore, going to Alastair’s when he needs a fix and staying until he’s okay to drive home. It bothers Sam, a little bit, that Lucifer won’t just go clean with him, but for a while he leaves it alone. He’s too busy fixing himself—biking again, eating salads, trying to gain back a bit of the weight he’s lost since he got hooked on heroin—to really focus on worrying about anyone else.

For Christmas, Sam buys Lucifer the latest Stephen King novel, and Lucifer buys Sam the original edition of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy. They have a candlelit dinner with store-bought lasagna that Sam heated in the oven and champagne in tall glasses, and it’s the closest Sam’s seen Lucifer to being sober in a long, long time. It’s mostly quiet, but that’s okay, that’s how Lucifer is, and Sam _really_ doesn’t mind when he feels a hand sneaking up his thigh and coming to rest half an inch away from his crotch. 

They go in their room, and Lucifer slides over Sam, slow and easy, and presses kisses to his neck, his collarbones, where his skin is exposed and vulnerable. Sam tugs him up and kisses him on the mouth, fucking his tongue against Lucifer’s and shivering at the groan that comes up from the back of his throat. 

There are no words, none that Sam knows, that can describe how he feels when it’s like this. 

For New Year’s, Michael pays a five-minute visit to their apartment, his chin held straight out, eyes cold and dead. Lucifer tries to maintain an air of sobriety because Sam is in the room and there’s a bit of tension building between them now, like a small fire, any time he uses, but he ends up lashing out and throwing his guitar at Michael’s head before calmly asking him to leave. He ends up getting in a fight with Sam over this— _‘why the fuck did you throw your guitar, what did he even do?’ ‘He’s a belligerent ass, isn’t that enough?’_ —and they part ways soon after, with Lucifer storming out to drive to Alastair’s and Sam staying in so he can call Dean and bitch to him for a while about how everything’s falling apart.

Happy fucking New Year, indeed.

Everything quiets down for a while after that—Sam apologizes, though he doesn’t know why, and Lucifer (claims) to cut back to one gram a day, and they live in a state of perpetual friction, avoiding bumping shoulders for fear of what they might start.

And then Sam brings up the possibility of Lucifer quitting drugs.

*

There’s a loud crash from somewhere outside the apartment, and Sam drops the pen which he was using to fill out his latest college application—nothing definite yet, just considering the possibilities—and rushes to the door, heart in his throat.

“Luce,” he calls. “Is that you?” There’s no answer, and Sam hesitates before opening the door a crack, looking out. 

Lucifer is sprawled, sitting halfway up, across their front steps, clutching a mostly empty bottle of beer, his arms stretched over his knees as he stares into the distance. He looks up at Sam and grins, a quick flash of teeth stained with blood, and something in Sam’s chest topples and falls. He reaches down and grabs him by the shoulder, hauling him to his feet. Lucifer almost loses his grip on the bottle, staggering backwards into Sam, and both of them fall into the apartment, a tangle of legs and arms. The beer spills on the floor, a dark gold stain. 

“Shit,” Sam grunts, shoving Lucifer off him. He scrambles to his feet and walks over to shut the door, and Lucifer starts laughing, curled on the ground where he is, fingers trailing along the mouth of the bottle. There’s something oddly chilling about his laughter, and Sam fights the urge to just leave, because _okay,_ really, _enough._

As it is, he just slams the door shut, loud enough to startle Lucifer into silence, and then he leans over and grabs the bottle by the neck, pulling it out of his reach.

“—in fuck are you doing,” Lucifer asks, the first part of his sentence getting cut off by the slur in his speech.

“You’ve had your fun,” Sam snaps. “It’s time to stop now, Luce. It’s been long enough, man.”

“Easy enough for you to say, Sober Sam,” Lucifer shoots back, and Sam’s pretty sure he’s the only person who could actually make sobriety sound insulting. “All I did was drink a few beers—maybe I snorted _one_ line, why the fuck is that even such a bad thing?”

Sam sucks in a breath and tries to remind himself that this is the same man who, this time last year, was playing bars and taking control of entire crowds with just his voice and those hypnotically dangerous eyes of his—the same man who used to chase him around the apartment until they’d both fall into bed, and then it was a competition to see who’d end up on top, lips pushed frantically together, hands everywhere. “You know why it’s bad,” he says, tugging hard on his hair. “You lectured me on it once, Lucifer, you—”

“Yeah, well, people change,” Lucifer interrupts, standing so that he and Sam are almost at eye level and folding his arms across his chest. His voice is dropping, the way it always does when he’s irritated, and part of Sam just wants to back the fuck off and let it go, but he’s been doing that, and it’s not producing any effect. So he pushes:

“The drugs are fucking with you, Luce—you have to see that.”

“All I see is you feeling bad that you can’t shoot up with me anymore.”

_He’s just saying it to goad you,_ Sam’s mind tells him, but he doesn’t care. “I haven’t felt bad once since I quit. I don’t crave it.” ( _Except sometimes, when he dreams about the drip into his veins._ ) “You’re _dying,_ man. I can’t. I can’t watch you do this to yourself.” 

“Then fucking don’t,” Lucifer snarls. He points at the door. “Exit’s that way, Winchester; don’t trip on your way out.”

Sam’s mouth falls open before he can stop it. “You’re twisting my words on purpose!”

“I don’t have to twist anything that’s already the truth.”

“So you think I don’t want to stay here and help you come clean?”

“What if I don’t want that?”

Sam’s mouth goes dry, and he has to swallow before his jaw will work again. “You don’t want sobriety?”

The thin lines around Lucifer’s eyes tighten, and he worries his bottom lip for a second before clenching his teeth. “No,” he says, an emotion on his face that Sam cannot identify, something like pain, maybe, or shame. “No, I think I’m perfectly fine like this.”

“Fucking Christ,” Sam says. He stares at Lucifer for a second, how thin he is, dark circles under his eyes, cheeks hollow enough that the bones cast shadows over his skin, and the fear that seizes his chest makes him lash out instinctively. “You aren’t _listening_ to me. You _need_ to sober up, Lucifer, you—”

“Fuck off,” Lucifer interrupts. He reaches over and grabs his jacket from the arm of the sofa, slinging it over his shoulders and heading for the door. 

“Where the fuck are you going?” Sam asks, voice too loud in the sudden silence. 

“Out,” Lucifer says, harshly, and then the door is open and shut, and he’s gone. 

Sam goes over to the kitchen table, grabs his college application, and rips it into eight pieces, hands shaking as he lets paper fly.

*

_Sam spends the majority of the funeral with his head down and his hands clasped between his knees, trying to maintain some semblance of control over himself. Michael reads a eulogy, some bullshit last-minute thing about what a “great guy” Lucifer was, and how he will be “sorely missed” by his “loving family”, and Sam has to resist the urge to jump up and punch him in the throat. He can feel Balthazar tensing beside him and knows he’s thinking the same thing:_ how the hell does he get off spouting shit like that?

_After the service, they all get in their cars and follow the hearse in a dark, solemn procession down the street—Sam sees Dean and Castiel leaving, but he doesn’t really mind; two less people who’ll have to witness the inevitable fight between the Morgensterns. They arrive at the cemetery, and the priest reads the Bible passage about “from dust you were created, and unto dust you shall return” as the casket is lowered to the ground. Sam watches it slowly get covered with dirt, and he feels his throat closing up._

_Then the few people who aren’t family leave, and Sam is alone with Mr. Morgenstern and his sons._

_“He’d want the headstone to say ‘Morningstar’,” is the first thing Michael says._

_“Oh, for Christ’s sake, he wasn’t still going by that ridiculous translation of our surname?” Adonai snaps. It’s the first time Sam’s ever heard him speak, and he’s startled by the sheer contempt in his voice. “His birth certificate states his name as ‘Nicholas Morgenstern’, and that’s what’s going on his grave.”_

_Sam frowns. ‘Nicholas?’ he mouths at Balthazar, who just sighs, looking exasperated._

_“Dad, no one’s called him ‘Nicholas’ since he was fifteen,” Gabriel starts, but Adonai points a trembling finger at him and snarls, “You stand down, son.”_

_“His legal name,” Michael says slowly, staring directly into Adonai’s dark eyes, “is Lucifer Morningstar, that’s how he’s listed in the obits and that’s how he’s going to be remembered—”_

_“Not if I have anything to say about it! Why the hell should I allow my own son’s grave to be defiled by a name like that?”_

_“Maybe if you’d actually pretended to give a fuck about any of us nineteen years ago, you could have a say in this.”_

_Adonai looks momentarily stunned, and Sam’s willing to bet that Michael has never talked to him like this before._

_Then he leans back and slaps Michael across the face. The sound echoes ugly and loud in the silence of the graveyard, and Michael flinches backwards, his expression closing off almost instantly._

_“I will not allow you to speak to me like that,” Adonai says, his tone measured. He takes a step towards Michael, then stops, his fist clenched at his side. “I refuse to see Nicholas’ grave marked with the name ‘Lucifer’, as though he were Satan—”_

_“That’s his fucking_ name, _for Christ’s sake—!”_

_“—our family will never live this down, Michael—”_

_“Oh, yeah, that’s really what you care about, how all this is gonna look to the family, screw your own sons’ feelings—”_

_“Hey,” Sam interrupts, before he really knows what he’s doing, and both men stop in the middle of their sentences and turn to stare at him. He feels Balthazar’s eyes on him, warning him to step down, but he doesn’t care. He can’t take this anymore. “Look, um, Mr. Morgenstern, I want you to know that Lucifer—”_

_“Who are you?” Adonai snaps, eyes narrowing. He turns away from Michael and tilts his head, and a chill runs down Sam’s spine at how very similar to his sons he looks._

_“Sam Winchester,” he says, and he must let some of the irritation he’s feeling creep into his voice, because Adonai sneers. (He looks like Zachariah, fucking hell, and Sam swallows down a wave of nausea.)_

_“Oh yes,” Adonai says, “you’re the man who killed my son.”_

_“I—what?” Sam stares, and much as he wants to defend himself, to deny this, he can’t quite bring himself to. Because in his heart, he knows it’s true: it was his fault Lucifer got into the car, it was his fault Lucifer was on drugs, it was his fault Lucifer was so goddamn unhappy—_

_“Yes, you, Sam Winchester. I heard about you, I heard how you took my faggot son and you fucked him in the ass—”_

_“Shut the fuck up,” Balthazar says. His voice is ice, cold and deadly just below the surface, and Adonai turns for the third time that day to stare at his second eldest son with something like shock on his face._

_“You dare—”_

_“Michael said it best, Father. Maybe if you’d been there nineteen years ago, we’d actually respect you. But what the fuck are you to us except a man we happen to share DNA with? You have no right to tell us how to label Luce’s grave. You have no right to tell us what he should or should not have been called. And you definitely don’t have the right to talk to Sam. He’s been here for us longer than you ever fucking were at any given time, so just go fuck off, that’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?”_

_Adonai’s expression tightens, then falls, and he looks suddenly old, in a way Sam can’t quite explain. “Fine,” he snaps. “Put whatever name you like on Nicholas’ grave. Just don’t expect me to come back and visit someone who called himself after the Devil when he was alive.” He shrugs his coat up higher on his shoulders and walks off, back in the direction of his car._

_“Say ‘hi’ to the latest lay for us,” Michael calls after him. Adonai’s back stiffens, but he doesn’t stop walking, and soon he and his car are out of sight._

_“Shit,” Balthazar breathes, pressing his fingers against the bridge of his nose._

_“Asshole hasn’t changed,” Michael observes. Then, to Sam, “Be glad this is the only time you’ll ever have to deal with him.”_

_Sam gives him a shaky smile, but Adonai’s words are still ringing in his head—‘you’re the man who killed my son’—and he’s finding it difficult to focus on anything but the memory of Lucifer’s charred, ripped up body on the cold metal table in the morgue. His throat tightens again, and Balthazar must notice, because suddenly he’s there, gripping Sam by the arm. “Let’s walk,” he says, and Sam doesn’t object._

_They head down the path a few headstones, until they’re standing in front of Wilhelm Klaus (1832-1904). Then Balthazar lets go of Sam’s arm and takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”_

_Sam opens his mouth to object, but Balthazar holds up his hand. “No, seriously, Sam, I can’t let you take the credit for this one. I—Luce must’ve not told you, way you two were fighting towards the end, but he called me. About a week before he died.”_

_“What.”_

_“He called me up in Manhattan, wanted to know if he could talk to me for a minute, because his life was falling apart and he didn’t know what else to do. I said sure, of course, and he told me about you—how you sobered up, how ashamed he was that he couldn’t join you on that road. He said he wanted to, but somehow he didn’t have the same willpower that you did, and he kept wanting to ask you to help him but he couldn’t quite make himself let go of the drugs long enough. He said he was afraid that you’d leave him, soon as you saw how weak he was at the center.”_

_Sam exhales sharply._

_“So I said to him, ‘Luce, I promise you, you can get sober. You’re stronger than the drugs, and you’re better than this. And don’t worry, Sam’s not gonna leave you.’ And he was quiet for a minute, then, and then he spoke, and his voice had kind of changed, and he said—” here Balthazar pauses, shutting his eyes like he can’t make himself look at Sam as he speaks—“he said, ‘No, Balthazar, I know. I know he’s not going to.’ And then he made some excuse and hung up, and that was the last time I ever spoke to him.”_

_Both men are quiet for a long time, as the implication of Lucifer’s sentence sinks into Sam’s brain, and he digs his fingers into the weather-beaten headstone beside them to keep his balance. He opens his mouth to speak, but the words won’t come._

_Then Balthazar says, “You can’t blame yourself for that, Sam. You couldn’t have known.”_

_Sam nods. A few tears nudge at the backs of his eyes, threatening to fall, but Balthazar’s face is dry, and Sam forces himself to stay calm as well, and then Michael, Anna, and Gabriel are walking towards them._

_“Hey, you two done talking yet?” Michael asks, slinging his arm across Balthazar’s shoulders. “Because I feel like we need to go pay homage to him. Drinking. He’d want that, wouldn’t he?” He’s looking at Balthazar as he’s speaking, something almost like hope in his expression, and Balthazar hesitates, then nods. He doesn’t move any closer to Michael, but he doesn’t push him away either._

_“You gonna come too, Samuel?” Michael’s tone is friendly, but Sam shakes his head ‘no’._

_“Gotta stay here for a bit,” he says, and gestures towards Lucifer’s grave. Michael nods; then, to Balthazar:_

_“C’mon, man, Roadhouse’s missed your ugly mug.” He gestures at Gabriel and Anna, and she grabs Balthazar’s hand, and the four of them walk together to their cars._

_Sam watches until the last taillight has disappeared around the corner of the road, and then he walks back to where Lucifer is buried. He kneels beside the fresh mound of dirt, hesitates, then says:_

_“Lucifer, you ass,” and his voice is wrecked and broken in the wind. He flattens his palm on the ground, digging his fingers into the soil. “Why the fuck didn’t you wait for me?”_

_He’s quiet for a long time, head bowed, tears dripping silently onto the grass, hair falling around his face. Then he straightens up, setting his jaw and tensing his shoulders, and he walks away. He goes to his car, gets in, and drives off, music blaring through the speakers, and he does not allow himself to look back._

*

Lucifer doesn’t come home. 

Sam doesn’t worry much; Lucifer’s been away longer for less than a fight, but he still thinks it’s a bit rude that he doesn’t at least call and say where he is. He waits as long as he can for him, but at three in the morning he finds his eyelids are starting to droop, and before he can stop himself he falls asleep on the sofa, arms crossed over his chest, legs sprawled over the end, tense and uneasy. 

An hour later, he wakes up and finds Lucifer standing at the end of the sofa. He’s not saying anything, just standing there, hands at his sides, head tilted, and Sam blinks away sleep and mutters groggily:

“Luce? When’d you come back?” 

Still, Lucifer doesn’t speak, and the restless feeling in Sam’s chest starts up again, harder this time. He props himself up on one elbow, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and says, “Lucifer? Hey, man, you okay?”

Lucifer walks over to him, then, and rests his fingers against Sam’s temple. “Shh,” he murmurs. “Sam, don’t talk. Just rest, love; just go back to sleep.” 

Sam wants to protest, but the touch of Lucifer’s skin on his is cool and oddly soothing, and he finds himself lying back down, his eyes shutting of their own accord. He reaches up and rubs his fingers against Lucifer’s wrist, and Lucifer lets out a quiet sigh, soft and almost sad.

It sounds vaguely like Sam’s name.

“Talk in the morning,” Sam murmurs, or thinks he does, and then he’s asleep. 

When he wakes up, there is no sign of Lucifer in the apartment, no sign that he was ever there, except that Sam now has a pillow resting underneath his head and a blanket draped over his shoulders. He calls Lucifer’s cell, but it goes straight to voicemail—which, okay, _weird._ He tries not to worry, and succeeds for maybe an hour before calling Michael, and then Gabriel, and Dean ( _“have you seen your cousin, Cas?” “No, unfortunately, please apologize to Sam for me”_ ), and even Ellen and Jo at the Roadhouse, but none of them know where Lucifer is, or where he might be. 

At three in the afternoon, he calls Alastair, but of course the bastard doesn’t pick up.

At six, he calls the police department; gives them a description of Lucifer, and what kind of car he drives, and his license plate number, read off the forms buried in the back of a desk in their room. “Don’t worry, Mr. Winchester,” the officer says, “we’re sure he’ll turn up eventually. Or come home, whichever’s first.” Sam’s pretty sure they’re mocking him at the station, _listen to the pretty boy, crying for his partner,_ but he can’t bring himself to care. 

On the second day, he sits with the phone in his lap, curling his hair in his fingers and tugging on it until his scalp aches, chewing his lips through until he tastes blood. He doesn’t sleep that night, just waits, but there is no call, and Sam’s pretty sure he’s going to go insane.

On the third day, he calls Lucifer’s cell again; and again, it goes straight to voicemail. “Where _are_ you, Luce?” he asks, not bothering to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Just call me back, okay? Please. I don’t care if you’re still mad at me, just call me back. Come home, man.”

He forces himself to go out and get dinner—a Quarter Pounder, which he eats sloppily, ketchup dripping down the front of his gray shirt, smearing into the cotton. He tries to stay awake that night, but he can’t fight it, and eventually strips off his shirt and his jeans and curls up in their bed at ten-thirty, the phone half an inch from his ear. 

The call comes at midnight.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd also like to thank my friend Monroe for being incredibly patient and reading over thousands of parts of this, answering all my questions concerning bits and pieces, and generally helping it not to suck ass.
> 
> And my friend Kate, for reassuring me that it's actually good. 
> 
> Liked? Hated? Let me know.


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